


The Descent

by dgeheimnis



Series: Gravity [2]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Demonic Possession, F/F, Femslash, Forgiveness, Vampire Laura Hollis, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2016-03-09
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dgeheimnis/pseuds/dgeheimnis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In over a century, Laura was the only person Carmilla met who was worth saving. However, love will have its sacrifices and heroic vampire crap always comes at a price. </p><p>A sequel, picking up only a few hours after "Stumbling." Canonically set in season two.</p><p>Let’s vow to never become the monsters that we are trying to protect ourselves from…<br/>— 	Rudy Francisco<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in."  
> —  
> Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“So, we go back.” 

Somewhere out there in the darkness was the mountain where it had all gone wrong. Even if Laura could see the peak looming through the storm clouds, she knew she wouldn’t recognize it from all the others. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the hospital window anyway and traced the path of the rain as it ran down the glass with her finger tips. She tried to imagine the rain hitting the ground but all she could see was the descent.

The way the raindrops ran together like ribbons reminded her of the opening scene of the book her father had given her shortly after she had come out to him. For a moment, she couldn’t recall the name. It felt so distant now, literally a lifetime ago. Then it came back to her. _Annie on my Mind_. How many times had she re-read it? Enough to have whole passages, if not entire chapters, memorized at one point. Searching her brain, she remembered only bits and broken passages at best: a unicorn tapestry, a candy wrapper blowing across the beach, topsy turvy pots and pans, and a sense of golden light in a New York City museum. A temple and a game of knights. Where the story once made her feel warm and loved, thinking of it now made Laura’s heart sink. She couldn’t recall where she had last left her copy.

It was a treasured gift at one point. A sweet reply to a statement that had at one point scared Laura more than anything else in her life. How simple those words seemed in retrospect. She didn’t even remember what she had said, all that remained was a sense of how heavy the words felt and the weight of the lost book. 

What would her dad give her now, she wondered, if he knew? Something by Anne Rice? Or would he go straight for the classic with Bram Stoker? At least there was some comfort in knowing that it would never be _Twilight_. He had taken a violent dislike to the franchise and went on righteous tirade when Laura had mentioned in passing a slight interest in seeing one of the movies with some friends. 

Of course, there would never actually be any book from her father, not for this. There would be no heavy words over the kitchen counter, no confession at a stop light, or during the commercial break of some BBC special. He could never know that all those Krav Maga lessons and careful instructions on how to look both ways before crossing the street were all for nothing. She had still died young. Like her mother.

Hadn’t he promised her that monsters like her didn’t exist? All those times when he swore that there was nothing hiding in her closet or no demons lurking in the shadows, had he known that he was lying? Would he ever know? She hoped not.

Around her, the world was still doing whatever it was that the world did. Everything and nothing in equal, ambivalent measures. At least both she and Carmilla had been able to use the shower in LaFontaine and Perry’s hospital room. The grime and the dirt from the mountain was now swirling down the institutional drain.

Carmilla was still standing in the scratchy hospital towel as the four deliberated, a small puddle forming at her feet. Laura caught herself wondering if Carmilla would catch a cold before remembering that Carmilla was dead. That they were both dead. No wonder Carmilla leaned up against the wall, soggy and unimpressed. 

LaFontaine and Perry were about to be discharged and no one was coming to pick them up. A winter storm was closing in and they needed a next step, but they were going around in circles. The two fractions clung to opposite sides of the room: the humans perched on hospital beds while the vampires leaned against the opposite wall by the window. No one could agree. No one could acknowledge the inevitable. And so Laura, mostly silent up until that point, broke the gridlock. 

“So, we go back.” The words felt like a fearful relief when they entered the world.

“Wait, I think there is still cheap hospital shampoo in my ears because it sounded like you just said that we should go back,” Carmilla spoke slowly, carefully spelling out her disbelief and waiting for logic to set in.

Laura shrugged nonchalantly, her eyes still vacantly staring out the window. From where she was sitting, she was the only one seeing the situation clearly. The logic Carmilla wished for would never come.

“Laura… Laura no.” Carmilla continued her protest. “We can’t go back.”

“Have you been paying attention?” Perry sputtered nervously. “That’s not how you flee, Laura. You flee in the opposite direction. You run _away_ from the danger. You don’t run towards an angry angler fish demigod for god’s sake. _That is the exact opposite of fleeing._ How is this even a suggestion?”

“I don’t see how we have any other choice.” Laura reluctantly tore her eyes away from the window to look at her friends. “Your parents aren’t coming to pick you up. No one’s parents are because they can’t get here and we can’t leave. All the airports and train stations have shut down because of the impending winter storm. Even if we could find a car, most of the roads are either closed until spring or in the process of being destroyed by earthquakes or being washed out by the rain. As for hiking, that really didn’t work out well for us the last time, did it? Or is anyone else here interested in eternal youth and a lifetime of Lestat references?” The last of her tirade ended on a bitter note that hung on the tension in the air. Laura closed her eyes, trying to gather her ragged edges before finishing on a softer, more resigned note. “We have no where else to go and even if we did, we have no way to get there. We can’t keep running like this. Face it. This is our only option.” 

After a moment of tense silence, LaFontaine interjected quietly, “Again, might I remind you of the angry angler fish god, which has a tendency towards mind control and has been the cause of all those earthquakes you just mentioned?”

“Even if we could find a map and you two somehow managed to survive the storm and this winter, whose to say we’d actually get anywhere? Knowing our luck, we’d probably eventually end up hiking straight onto the South Lawn anyway.” It had been heartbreaking to learn that in all their time in the mountains, they were only two towns over from where they started. “So we either wait the storm out here with the next potential angry mob or we go back to Silas until the weather calms down and we can form an actual plan on how to leave this godforsaken place for good.”

“There has to be an abandoned house around here where we could squat for a while…” Carmilla started and then held her hands up as everyone shot her disapproving looks. “Fine. We go back to Silas. Guess I’ll go get dressed,” Carmilla shut the bathroom door firmly behind her, defeat tinging her words. 

* * *

 

It wasn’t that Laura wasn’t thankful for the ride. She was. The rain had gotten heavier and only threatened to get worse. It was a miracle how the narrow mountain pass hadn’t washed out already and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to when they would have to get out and walk the rest of the way on their own. Their ride, a nurse from the hospital, had been very clear on that point: she would take them as far as the neighboring town where she lived and no further. After all, the roads were becoming progressively unsafe, her worried husband was expecting her, and she was exhausted from a double shift. There were other reasons given, all of them underscored by the superstitious fear of Silas University, and no one protested or tried to charm her into driving them further. She wasn’t wrong, but she was also unknowingly transporting two vampires. In for an unknown penny, but not in for an acknowledged pound.

Nurse Breunig-Please-Call-Me-Maja looked to be in her early forties, not that Laura had ever been any good at guessing ages. The woman could easily have been older or younger. It was obvious that she took special care with her appearance. Even as frizzy strands of hair broke free in every direction from the confines of a carefully pinned and sprayed ponytail, she seemed to be the type who took women lifestyle magazines almost too seriously. She was probably well versed with all the super foods currently in fashion and knew the proper way to pronounce açaí. Laura could easily imagine her running along the safer mountain roads in color coordinated outfits, weather and superstitions permitting. Maja Breunig seemed like the exact person Laura’s dad always seemed to date now, so different from Laura’s mother, the frail romantic. 

So while Laura was thankful for the ride, she no longer trusted herself in such close quarters with LaFontaine. LaFontaine, still recovering from the blood loss that had sealed Laura’s fate as a vampire, was buckled into the front passenger seat. Laura had strategically chosen the seat behind the driver, seemingly the farthest distance she could be from LaFontaine within the small confines of the Jeep. Even so, Laura found herself devising the most efficient way to lung across the back seat to rip out LaFontaine’s jugular with her fangs. Horrified at the violence now openlydwelling within her, Laura pressed herself up against car window and tried to think happy, blood-free thoughts.

Everyone else was a poor distraction at best. The car felt as dreary on the inside as the weather outside. Conversation was slow forming and awkward, stilted at best. Laura watched the windshield wipers frantically race back and forth while relishing how the heavy rain seemed to wash away almost all other distracting noises. It was calming, beautiful, the least overwhelming the world had been since she died.

“So, you all go to Silas?” Nurse Breunig tentatively breached the silence. 

“Yeah,” Carmilla confirmed when it seemed like no one else was moved to speak. “We do.” Until that moment, her slumped formed had seemed content to sink as deep as possible into the middle seat. She kept her head down, her face mostly covered by her hair and her hand.

 “Do you… do you girls like it there?” Nurse Breunig’s hesitation was clear. She wasn’t sure how anyone could enjoy attending to Silas University but enough students made it to graduation to potentially disprove her assumption.

“It’s an education,” Carmilla offered, however her tone seemed equally tentative on how someone might enjoy Silas. “It’s definitely not dull.”

“No, I imagine not.” Breunig replied thoughtfully. 

“There are worse places to be,” Carmilla continued her half-hearted defense of the school before rubbing the space between her eyes as if she had a headache. Laura wondered exactly what places rated on Carmilla’s worst than Silas list.

“I see a fair amount of your fellow students at the hospital, the overflow from your campus hospital,” Breunig’s curiosity seemed anything but satisfied.

“Well, you know college students,” Perry laughed uncomfortably, “always up to something foolish and stupid.”

“Well, actually in terms of brain development—“ LaFontaine piped up.

“Spare us the science lecture,” Carmilla groaned, finding their exuberance especially grating in the middle of being reminded that all roads in her life eventually led back to Silas. Considering she was in her fourth century, she was finding this to be an especially dismal observation.

Again the car lapsed into uncomfortable silence. Eventually the rain got so hard that they were forced to pull over to wait it out. Nurse Breunig tapped the steering wheel to an irregular beat that only she heard in her head. In the silent stillness of the car, her discomfort level was clearly growing. She was becoming increasingly aware that she trapped in a small enclosed area with a group of people who, after their time spent in the woods, appeared to be half-feral. The older woman’s eyes kept darting to the rear view mirror, her eyes lingering longer and longer on Carmilla’s hunched form. Neither woman seemed entirely comfortable in the other’s presence.

“You look like someone I used to know,” Breunig observed when the silence was reaching a point of becoming unbearable, her eyes locked on Carmilla’s form through the rear view mirror. “Did anyone else in your family attend Silas before you?”

Carmilla shook her head slowly. “Just me and my brother. First generation college students.” Brother. Laura had forgotten about Will. Had never even considered that he might have mattered on some level to Carmilla. The few times Laura ever saw them together they seemed so antagonistic, but weren’t siblings supposed to be like that? Had they been close on some deeper level and Laura had just never realized? Did Carmilla miss Will, did she silently mourn him? Laura had never thought to ask. She barely had brought up Carmilla’s Mother. Obviously it was complicated, but did Carmilla miss either of them like Laura missed her father? Like she missed her own mother?

“Are you twins?” 

Something flashed over Carmilla’s face. She sat up straighter, her knuckles turned white as she gripped the tight fabric of her pants. “No. He’s younger.”

“Does he like going to Silas with his older sister?” As Breunig continued the line of conversation her eyes never left Carmilla.

“We were never that close. He seemed to like it well enough when he was there I suppose.” Carmilla seemed to be putting a vast amount of physical effort into sounding as casual as possible. The rest of the car was trapped, silently observing the conversation in silent rapture. 

“Oh, did he transfer?”

“He died.” Carmilla’s voice was flat, for the first time looking up and challenging Breunig. Perry shifted uncomfortably. Laura caught a flash of Perry’s expression, she looked like she was going to be sick.

“God, I’m so… so sorry for your loss. That’s horrible,” Breunig gasped in that way Laura was used to hearing whenever the topic of her mother came up. No one ever expected to hear that someone was dead. It meant that no one was ever really prepared with an intelligent or half decent response. Laura had always wished people could figure out what to say in such circumstances ahead of time. It was exhausting trying to make other people feel better about her loss.

“As I said, we weren’t close.” Carmilla voice finally seemed to pick up the edge that had been building in her muscles.

“Still, it must have been very hard on your parents. Was he your only sibling?”

“I’m from a fairly large family. My Mother… liked to adopt. We were more or less the youngest.” 

“And you’re sure no one else from your… family went to Silas? It’s just you look exactly like this girl I met when I first started nursing. Oh, it must’ve been about twenty or so years ago now.” Her voice was almost wistful. Fearful. “She is very hard to forget. I remember… her eyes were like yours, they seemed infinitely… older somehow. It’s funny how eyes can seem so old. I can’t quite place her name though. Miri or Michi something? Miriam maybe? She came by the hospital a few times, always with someone else and never for herself. Then one day her twin brother picked her up and I never saw her again. You got a sense that she…” Breunig shook her head, as if thinking better of voicing whatever it was out loud. “Always wondered what happened to her.”

“A mystery for the stars, I suppose,” Carmilla shifted uncomfortably. 

“Funny, she said the same thing.”

“School saying,” Perry laughed nervously. “Oh look, I think the rain is letting up.”

* * *

It hardly mattered when the rain finally stopped. Nurse Breunig had dropped them off at the edge of campus, farther than she had originally promised. By that point, all attempts at conversation had stopped. No one spoke up to find out where this change of heart came from. Perhaps it was the fear that the act of asking would break whatever spell inspired this unexpected kindness. Almost everyone silently assumed it had something to do with Carmilla. 

After the car had stopped, it looked like Carmilla was going to say something but she only saluted Breunig before sliding out of the backseat and into the downpour with a resigned frown. The car idled for several moments longer before finally skidding back in the direction of civilization. 

There was no proud or victorious return to campus. Within seconds, they were drenched to their cores from the bitter winter rain. 

Silas seemed just as changed as Laura. The grounds were scorched and barren, ravaged by what they later discovered to be a turf war between the Zetas, the Summer Society, and the Alchemy Club. The angler fish god was somehow mercifully stuck in a crater. Their old dorm was resting on unstable ground.

Carmilla led them to a large apartment on the other side of campus. With a few choice violent words, she had cleared it of its current squatters. Outside, the thunder and lighting began again in earnest.

Inside, the shift in the group was nearly instantaneous. It was a change so subtle and yet so momentous it was jarring on a near physical level. While unified for better or worse in the wilderness, the four instantly separated like oil and water in civilization. The sound of their footsteps, naturally fallen into unison on the mountain, had been calming and reassuring. It had held Laura together on the road back to campus by providing the inkling of hope that she wasn’t alone. And now, like at the hospital, their gaits just as naturally separated themselves out for warm showers, dry clothes, rooms with beds to sleep, and for other concerns beyond immediate survival. Laura missed the steady, unified beat and, in her own way, missed the mountain more than she ever thought she would. Already becoming nostalgic, it felt like things had made sense there. Life was simpler when it was only flee, find food, find shelter, try to start a fire. And to not die. To survive.

“Guys,” Laura spoke as LaFontaine and Perry began to drift away towards other rooms and other floors like planets falling out of orbit. “Guys wait.”

The two paused and turned, looking expectantly at Laura. The humans shivered, the teeth chattering in a useless evolutionary attempt to create heat. Carmilla took a step closer to Laura, sensing something rising in her voice and half reached out to hold her hand. Carmilla paused, hesitating in the space between. Laura closed the distance, loosely intertwining their fingers.

“No one can know. Promise me that,” Laura insisted into the silence, her voice trembling and cracking. “No one can know that I died. That I’m…”

“Laura…” Carmilla closed her eyes.

“Promise me. No one can know about me, about what I am now.” Laura insisted with more fervor and desperation than before.

“You can say it, Laura.” Carmilla’s hold on Laura’s hand loosened but did not entirely slip away.

“Promise me. Say you promise.” 

* * *

[Earlier]

The steam from the shower had fogged up the mirror considerably. Laura leaned in closer, rubbing the condensation away so she could better inspect her fangs in her reflection. She leaned in so close her eyes went crosseyed and the world went blurry before she moved back to gain a clearer perspective. She tested their sharpness against her thumb, unintentionally pricking her skin. A small drop of blood rose to the surface. She instinctually placed her finger in her mouth, sucking the blood away like she had done so many times before as a human. The action, as a vampire, seemed to take on a different meaning.

Her attention wandered to her other hand, extending her fingers out as wide as she could before curling them up in the tightest fists possible. It was strange, the newfound strength, the differentness of it despite the absolute sameness of it all. She repeated this action several times, flexing and extending her hand, but it did nothing to reveal the answer of the mystery she sought.

Bodies were such strange things. Now more so than ever, in all its newfound strength her body seemed like a frail, ill-fitting thing. So fragile and needy in comparison to all that was coursing inside her. Even in moments of relative calm, she wondered how her skin and muscles did not tear at the seams completely or erode over time to a thin nothingness that would fail to contain the ever growing expanse within her. The delicateness of her human body seemed distant and confusing to her present reality. How do such weak bodies ever manage to hold souls?

And did she still have a soul now? If so, how would she ever manage contain it for centuries at a time? It felt like it would most certainly either break free or slip away.

She withdrew her thumb from her mouth. The bleeding had stopped and already any sign of the injury had disappeared. Not even the faintest whisper remained on her skin. In the hazy warmth of the bathroom, she circled back to the old scars from her past life: the time she lacerated her knee running in the playground when her father wasn’t looking and had needed stitches, the time she cut her finger slicing bread when she wasn’t looking. They were all still there. She wondered if they too would disappear with time or if they would remain to keep her memories, her histories in tact.

Now was not the time to ask Carmilla if these marks would only take longer to disappear, heal, and erase yet another sign of her lost humanity. She wanted, she needed them to stay and feared that some day she would wake up with perfect, unmarked skin. These imperfections were crucial. Hundreds of years from now she could say here, this was when I was a human. How silly the whole thing used to be, how boorish, how dull. What a silly fool she had been then. But look, this was when I learned how to swim in the ocean. This is when I fell in the woods. This is when I fell in the mountains. 

But no, there was no visible scar from that. How strange.

The door knocked, interrupting her revelry.

“In a minute,” Laura called out, reaching for the toothbrush Carmilla had swiped from the hospital gift shop, the reason she even began inspecting her fangs in the first place. She tried to focus on the task at hand. The scratchy hospital towel served as a minor distraction and she quickly changed back into her dirty clothes from the mountain. She could hear the beeping and buzzing of the machines counting off the seconds and the heartbeats. It’d be time to go soon.

* * *

[Present Day]

It was only supposed to be a few days until the storm passed, until the roads opened, until they could find an escape route. But then there were the murders of the newspaper staff and Laura’s overriding sense of guilt. Perry was right—it was their fault. Her fault. And it wasn’t just the murders. It was the turf wars, the antediluvian god stuck in a crater, and all the other upheaval that apparently came along with a power vacuum. It didn’t matter how much Carmilla explained that it was really her Mother’s fault. Laura couldn’t leave now, she had to fix it. She owed the school that much at least.

So they stayed. All of them. And soon no one was devising escape routes.

Over the first few days, Laura avoided the humans as much as possible. Well, she avoided LaFontaine. Perry was only by proxy. She didn’t know how to control the overwhelming need for her friend’s blood or how to tell them for fear of ruining a friendship already well on the road to falling apart.

Instead Laura made videos just like before. Acting like who she was before the mountain. This is how human Laura sat. This is how human Laura spoke and these were human Laura’s hand gestures. Everything was carefully filmed and edited to obscure anything that might give her away. Maybe she shifted her weight differently now or spoke in a new, clearly vampiric way. She was still Laura, but perhaps people knew how to read between the lines, knew how to smell the truth through their computer screens.

It was exhausting pretending to be the human Laura of last semester. It was draining to find perfectly reasonable explanations for avoiding LaFontaine and for never being alone together in the same room.

Carmilla soon learned to look for Laura in the solarium on the roof. The door would open and there Carmilla would be, standing with a book tucked under her arm and a cup of blood in each hand. 

Sitting side by side, they hardly spoke in those moments. It was even rarer even for them to touch. The night Laura rested her head on Carmilla’s shoulder, Carmilla froze for several moments as if not believing this moment to be more than merely fleeting. When Laura’s head remained on her shoulder, Carmilla’s body softened, and she wrapped her arm around Laura, drawing her in closer. They stayed like that for a long time under the flickering light, Laura staring up at the stars and Carmilla periodically turning the page on her book with her free hand.

If this was a movie, Laura thought Carmilla would be smoking. The cigarette would burn down to the filter and Carmilla would periodically flick the ash like an old movie star. The smoke of the mostly untouched cigarette would curl up into the heavens unnoticed by anyone but Laura. It would somehow be symbolic of something deep and meaningful in a way that would resonate with how Laura felt in that moment. Instead of blood, they would be drinking bottles of beer, or coffee. Maybe red wine in chipped mugs with ironic sayings. A well placed song would play in the background hitting just the right note of hope, guilt, isolation, fear, and tender affection to underscore the quiet beauty of the scene. The camera would pan up with the cigarette smoke and maybe, just maybe, the movie credits would roll. It would be with a sigh of relief that Laura would then be able to return to her somewhat more normal life as a human girl. 

But her life wasn’t a movie. So Laura was left to live in the moment without any helpful lighting queues or stage directions. She wondered if this was a book, how would she write it? If this moment was a song, how would the chorus go? If she had a way to return to how it was before, would she take it?

It was terrifying to realize that she cherished this moment and what that meant. At least for the next short while, the only reason she hadn’t forgiven Carmilla was that there was nothing to forgive. Heartbreaking as it was, being a vampire was the only way she’d ever have this moment. It was the only way she’d ever experience any moment ever again. In a way, she felt almost grateful. It was a strange and disorienting sensation.

“Hey Carm?” Laura’s mind raced for anything to distract her from this frightening sense of peace she felt flickering within her ribcage.

“Yeah?” 

“Did you know the nurse who drove us back?”

Carmilla arched an eyebrow, both amused and relieved. “Days later and all that has happened and _that’s_ what you ask me?”

“Well?” Laura pressed.

“Will had a habit of being too rough and not being discreet. Sometimes I’d bring the girls to the hospital to clean up his messes but mostly just to piss him off. At the time, she was new, too shiny and scared to know any better. She didn’t ask too many questions about strange puncture wounds. So I started to look for her when I’d bring the girls in. It was stupid really.”

For a couple of minutes they both let Carmilla’s words hang in the air before them.

“Was he really your brother?”

“Regrettably, but only in the vampire sense.” Carmilla closed her book, making no effort to mark her page.

“Whatever that means.” Laura didn’t try to hide the annoyance in her voice.

“It means thank god for small mercies that I wasn’t actually related to my idiot brother. What I said in the car was true. In a way, we were really only ever foster siblings at best.”

“So what does that make me and you?”

“It makes you Laura,” Carmilla spoke slowly, deliberately. “And me Carmilla.” And then, as if testing the waters, she added, “It makes us both undead fiends from the pits from hell.”

“I thought you said you were from Eastern Europe.”

Carmilla scrunched up her nose. “Same thing really.”

“You’re supposed to say-…” Laura pouted.

“I know what I said before, Laura.” Carmilla closed her eyes, exhausted by having to replay the past so accurately.

 Laura looked slightly crestfallen before pressing on, not one to be deterred for too long. “So, I mean is Will my uncle? Does that make you…?”

“Stop.” Carmilla tucked a strand of hair behind Laura’s ear. “It makes us ourselves and nothing more. That is it. Vampires, we carried over the analogy of families to make things easier, that’s all. Having some form of steady relationship over the centuries helps, but it’s a different kind of blood line. It’s not real, not really, not the way you think anyway. It’s more found family than anything else. So no, before you spiral off into wherever your head is taking you, I am not your mother now and whatever it is that we’re doing would never be considered….” Carmilla shook her head.

“Whatever it is that we’re doing?” The world went quiet in Laura’s ears and felt a sense of uneasiness growing in her stomach.

Carmilla gestured as if trying to display their issues out before them. “This, forgiving and not forgiving, sitting in the solarium night after night barely talking, barely touching, sharing a bed with our host of complications…”

“Funny, I thought that was called being girlfriends.”

“Is that what we are?” The softness of Carmilla’s voice, so full of sadness and hope, was near heartbreaking in its exhaustion.

Laura blushed slightly and intently examined her shoe. “It’s what we were before I died.”

“A few things changed since then. I wasn’t sure if this was one of them.”

* * *

[Present Day]

Danny lingered more than Laura remembered. But last semester Danny wouldn’t have had to linger, she would have been invited. She had been part of the group before she became too overbearing, too overprotective, and now more recently, too human.

It was not lost on Laura that so many people had seemed to bend over backwards to protect her and still here she was, dead by eighteen and a vampire. Periodically throughout the day, it would still hit her: she was dead. She was literally a dead man walking. Or rather, a dead woman walking and talking and pretending to be something she no longer was. She imagined it would lose its novelty after a while, but for now it isolated her in ways both noticed and ignored. And so, after the Zetas and the other Summers filed out and LaFontaine and Perry dispersed to the kitchen while Carmilla slunk off in hunt of her book, Danny lingered behind and Laura only wanted to be alone as she felt.

“So where were you? I mean, I get this text saying that you’re leaving and now here you are without a word, back like you never left. What happened?”

“We went to the mountains. We thought we could….” Laura tried to speak as casually as possible. “Turns out the Alps are a bit steeper than we expected and native to angry mobs and haunted diners. We got a little turned around during all the fleeing. And just when we saw a sign of civilization perhaps a little less pitch fork happy, things kind of… took a bit of turn. We ended up hitching a ride to a hospital for LaFontaine instead of to the nearest station. After that with the winter storm and everything, we didn’t really have much a choice but to come back.”

“But you guys are ok?” Underneath Danny’s words was the unspoken question: are you staying?

“Minor arm wounds aside, all good.” Laura nodded, swallowing uncomfortably as her hand waved away all the actual problems back to the mountain, back to the wilderness. “In retrospect, the Graz Airport is over eighty wintery miles away. Trying to escape through the Austrian Alps might not have been one of my more spectacularly brilliant plans. But we’re all still here.”

“Right, it’s not like anyone died.” Carmilla leaned up against the doorframe, a new book tucked underneath her arm and with a mug of blood in each hand. After pointed observation delivered with a deadpan expression, she regarded the two considerably younger women coolly before entering the room.

Laura opened her mouth to say something to protest, her eyes glaring, her mouth silently stuttering. 

Danny missed the entire struggle, her focus locked on the two mugs Carmilla placed on the floor as she sat down on the daybed. “Is that… do you have two cups of blood?”

Carmilla stretched out languidly before opening the book to its first page. “Saves me having to get up and refill it later. I remember quite liking this novel.”

“And you didn’t think to offer or get anything for anyone else when you were in the kitchen?” Danny inquired. Laura wasn’t sure why Danny was questioning Carmilla’s lack of hospitality, but it made her shift uncomfortably. It was a challenge Laura didn’t like issued and didn’t think it was Danny’s place to issue. More to the point, Laura didn’t like the potential answers the could arise from it.

“Anyone?” Carmilla picked up one of the mugs from where it sat on the floor and held it out to the girls as if she was truly offering. Laura looked horrified while Danny shuddered in disgust. “Didn’t think so.” Carmilla placed the mug back down on the floor and redirected her attention back to her book. 

“And the movies always made vampires out to be so charming,” Danny scoffed.

Carmilla rolled her eyes and turned her page. 

When Danny eventually left, Carmilla wordlessly held out the second mug of blood.

“Thanks.” Laura accepted the cup self-consciously. It still took a huge amount of effort to not drain the blood all in one go. She longed to have self control like Carmilla, to take her time, to savor and enjoy it. Maybe if she could master it, one day she’d trust herself around LaFontaine again. One day. Maybe.

Carmilla turned another page of before scooting over slightly to make room for Laura should she decide to join her.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "how to be a monster:  
> 1\. learn the taste of dirt and pain.  
> 2\. teach it to others till your knuckles bleed.  
> 3\. see if that makes it easier to breathe."  
> —  
> Amrita C., rinse and repeat

Carmilla joined the waking world with a soft groan. It was the type of morning she hated, the day already stale before she even opened her eyes. She had spent the entire night hunting for sleep on her half of the mattress. Even asleep, the desperation permeated her consciousness so thoroughly that she even tossed and turned in the sheets of her dreamworld. The lines between what was real and what had been a dream were blurred. But by morning, there had been no bloody coffins, no girl in a little white dress crying, and no roses that would never grow out of the parched, barren soil. A sure sign that if she had slept, she hadn’t slept enough to dream.

Looking at Laura, who was curled up beside her in a thin set of pajamas, made her frown. Once again, Carmilla’s restless tossing and turning had claimed the blankets, leaving Laura exposed to the morning air. In the quietness of the early afternoon light, Carmilla could clearly make out the outline of Laura’s spine and the suggestion of her ribs peaking through the white tank top. A harsh reminder of what had been lost on the mountain. Weight gain was hard for a vampire. As was remembering to breathe. Still accustomed to the gentle rise and fall of Laura’s chest, Carmilla found herself struggling with this new stillness.

Carmilla sat up and gently draped the blankets back over Laura.

Easily within arm’s reach, Laura seemed so far away. Carmilla leaned over and kissed the air above Laura’s temple, not wanting to wake the other girl.

It was then that Carmilla remembered the frayed edges of her dream. The hazy words clung halfheartedly to her consciousness before they slipped away entirely. The weight, the general shape, but not the form or meaning, lingered in the air before they, too, disintegrated out of reach. Carmilla vaguely remembered feeling at peace, but that sensation had not carried over into the waking world.

Fully awake, she felt empty and at a loss. She shook her head, as if it was so easy to free herself from the deep clawed hold that the void had burrowed within her. Resigned to reality, she disentangled herself from the sheets and padded across the cold, hard floor.

“Carm?” Laura’s voice was thick with sleep as her arm extended across the empty space where Carmilla’s body had been only seconds before.

“Mm?” Carmilla turned around with a small flutter of hope.

“You’re up.” Laura blinked, fighting against the brightness of the world. She rubbed her eyes in an attempt to force consciousness back into her body.

“As are you,” Carmilla observed, a small upturn to her lips. Needing something to do with her hands, she fought the urge to cross them over her chest. Instead, she settled on resting a hand on her hip.

“I don’t think you’ve ever gotten up before me before.” Laura frowned as if disappointed. As if waking each morning had been a race that she had finally lost.

“Couldn’t sleep, not really sure this counts.” Carmilla motioned behind her with a slight nod of her head in the direction of the kitchen. “Breakfast. You want some?”

Laura nodded sleepily. “Please.”

When Carmilla returned with the usual sight of two cups of blood in her hands, she perched tentatively on the edge of the bed. She was careful to maintain space between their bodies, leaving it up to Laura to cross it if she wanted. Sometimes Laura did, sometimes she didn’t. The space in between seemed to have a life of its own with a personality, with a growing set of likes and dislikes. It practically vibrated at times. Carmilla grimly wondered if she should start feeding it or if it would ever finally die of starvation.

“You know, normal couples get each other coffee in the morning.” Laura cupped the blood firmly in both hands, as if expecting a comforting warmth to radiate out to her fingers.

“Yeah, well, you’re on your own if you want coffee.” Carmilla sipped her blood and swallowing the urge to point out that normal couples, by Laura’s definition, probably weren’t vampires either. The whole comparison seemed pointless, a bit childish in how unnecessarily painful it was. But Laura, even if a vampire, was still a child and would still be one for quite some time.

“You’ve made me hot chocolate before,” Laura noted with a playful pout.

“But not coffee.” Carmilla remained unmoved. Sometimes a cigar was not just a cigar. Sometimes coffee wasn’t a drink but a symbol that she could not in good faith entertain.

Laura nodded as if she did not quite grasp the delineation. Staring at her liquid breakfast, Laura wondered if she’d ever get sick of the way blood tasted. Hundreds of years on the same diet might have that affect. As a human, she had barely been able eat the same breakfast cereal for more than a few months straight.

Above them either LaFontaine or Perry was moving about. It sounded like someone was cleaning, so probably Perry.

“You know, it’s not what it’s cracked up to be, right?” Carmilla’s fingers twisted within the soft fabric of their sheets, not quite ready to let go of coffee, of normal couples, and of this ideal that Laura would let haunt them for decades to come if she had half a chance.

“What’s not?”

“This idea you have in your head. It doesn’t exist, not really. At some point, you have to accept your own normal.”

“My own normal, like being a vampire?” The accusation, the pain was not hard to miss in Laura’s voice.

Carmilla reached across the space between them to delicately wipe away the small trail of blood forming in the corner of Laura’s mouth. For the briefest of seconds, she inspected the blood stain on her finger before placing it between her own lips. With a subtle flick of her tongue, the blood was gone. Carmilla withdrew her finger only slightly and held it posed in the air between their bodies as their eyes met. Laura’s eyes dilated slightly as Carmilla unconsciously bit her lip, before looking away.

“We can’t live in a world of ideals,” Carmilla said in the stillness of the room, the shame on Laura’s face before she turned away still haunting her.

“Why not? Why not at least try?” Laura’s eyes, burning with hope, remained locked on the blanket she gripped tightly in her fist.

“The world is what it is, cupcake. You will never forgive me. I will never make you coffee in the morning. Sometimes it’s better just to accept it before anyone gets more hurt than they already are.”

Laura hid behind a particularly long swallow, her mind fighting against what Carmilla said. She resolutely placed the empty mug on the night stand before speaking. “Never is a strong word for a vampire to use, don’t you think?”

* * *

 

That night when Laura stepped into the solarium, she was surprised to find Carmilla already there ahead of her with an opened book on her lap and the customary two mugs of blood sitting untouched beside her.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Carmilla looked up from her book, her voice remained neutral despite a tentative smile forming.

Laura filled the empty space next to Carmilla with a naturalness and ease as if she had always done so. Their bodies were close enough that Carmilla felt comfortable in wrapping her arm around Laura. Without pause or hesitation Laura nestled up against her.

Both seemed comfortable in the silence. Carmilla watched Laura subtly over the edge of her book, rarely actually reading in the younger girl’s presence. Instead, she looked for signs she hoped she’d never find, traces of what she had observed so many times before with her siblings, the ones who didn’t survive, the ones who went mad.

It is not a simple matter when you take someone’s death away. Death is precious. Scary, powerful, and intimate. It was someone’s most important possession. Probably the only possession they truly had. It was the reason they breathed, and, even if they wouldn’t admit it, it was the reason they would get out of bed. The reason they strived for the monumental. The reason they gave up too easily, and the reason they gave up bleeding and broken with nothing left to give but the air in their lungs. From where Carmilla sat, living was an attempt to give reason, a validity, an indescribable something to your death, no matter how pointless the effort. Death gave life that necessary meaning. Without death, that sole certainty in life, there was only the scary and vast emptiness of time. It was enough to drown any god or titan, let alone those who began ashuman.

The change happened slowly in some, almost immediately in others, never in a rare few. Carmilla could feel her own before and after within her, a distant but defining memory. It was a story told too many times, worn threadbare, and altered beyond recognition over the centuries.

Now with Laura was the threat, the potential of a slow descent into madness that may never come. Carmilla worried more about Laura than some of her other, frailer seeming siblings. Mother had never turned anyone quite like Laura. Only too late did Carmilla fear that there was a reason for this. Laura’s nativity and ideals would either save her or spell out her ruin in a short, clear sentence: subject, verb, destruction.

What was a human without their death?

A vampire.

Whatever that meant.

“Carm?”

Carmilla closed her book, giving Laura her full attention. “Yes?”

“Do you still remember your last moment as a human?”

“Can’t say that I make an effort to,” Carmilla spoke carefully. “One doesn’t exactly cherish the memory of being murdered.” She had learned long ago to accept the memory as one that would always haunt the edges of her mind. It was best if she never looked directly at it for fear she’d accidentally invite it to linger.

“Right.” Laura frowned slightly, looking down and poking the toes of her shoes.

Carmilla stared out into the distance, still adjusting to the campus’ silhouette without the library. Below them it sounded like LaFontaine was making yet another sound of distressed frustration. They had been making those noises a lot since the library disappeared. That and repeating JP’s name over and over. It would be almost touching if it wasn’t so depressingly disturbing.

“I… I don’t remember the last moment I was alive. I wish I had it, you know, to hold onto or to remind me or… something.” Laura lifted her head off Carmilla’s shoulder and made eye contact. “It just feels like it should be important, you know? One minute I was and then the next moment I wasn’t. Why can’t I remember it more clearly?”

“You remember it.” Carmilla’s voice rasped from the memory. “You were happy, dancing like a fool… Your cheeks and your nose were red from the cold, and I could see your breath as you danced about in the snow.” A soft, unintentional smile filled in the cracks in her voice. “The look on your face was one of sheer… hope. That was it. It happened so quickly, you didn’t have time for anything else. You were happy.”

“And now…”

“And now, you still dance like a fool. I don’t know how this day and age classifies what you do as dancing, but it does. That wasn’t your last moment, Laura. It was just simply a moment before something else. Nothing has changed.”

“Except _everything has,_ ” Laura insisted, even though she was still figuring out exactly what changed and how different it was now.

“I mean, you’re still short.”

Laura let out a frustrated groan. Carmilla was purposefully missing the point.

“Is it really that bad being so short?” Carmilla continued to tease Laura in a pale effort to shift the conversation into a lighter direction.

“You’re like an inch taller than me,” Laura scoffed.

“I remember tip toes once, when you kissed me.” There was a sly but wistful tone creeping into Carmilla’s words.

“When I was barefoot and you were wearing your boots maybe,” Laura scoffed, allowing herself to be deterred to happier thoughts for the moment.

“I miss it.”

“Miss what?”

“You, on your toes kissing me.”

“I…” For a moment, like the sun peaking through the grey clouds, Laura’s face opened up. For the briefest of moments, she was completely unguarded. There was no judgement and no blame before she completely shut down, her face dropping as she spoke. “I miss my heart beat.”

Carmilla reacted almost as if she had been physically struck, eyes closing, body tightening before slumping slightly.

“You did the best you could, I know. It’s just…” Laura softened, but it was too late.

Carmilla looked out into the stars, exhaling all the pent up and unnecessary oxygen that had gathered in her lungs. “A lot. I know.” She missed Laura’s heart beat too, more than she could ever say. You didn’t save someone by turning them into a vampire. She knew it but had tried anyway.

Laura reached out and covered Carmilla’s hand with her own. “I’m trying. I am.”

“So am I.”

The unspoken question of whether it’d be enough lingered in the air.

* * *

 

Mattie wore unpredictability like an expensive French perfume. Finding her standing in Mother’s apartment after all those years felt like a gift Carmilla had been unable to ask for but still received anyway. Threats of murdering her already dead girlfriend aside, Mattie always gave Carmilla the sense that, at least for a little while, things might actually be okay. Mattie was the last remaining constant in Carmilla’s life. There was a warm comfort in shared histories and past traumas implicitly understood without need of context or explanations. Carmilla could simply be. No footnotes, no appendixes.

Mattie was family. Or how Carmilla imagined family to be. All that remained of Carmilla’s actual family were vague shadow puppets in a distant corner of her mind. She didn’t know if her bloodline still existed. Neither did she care where the bodies were buried or where the living passed the time before their bodies, too, would rot away. But Carmilla knew Mattie. She knew the cities Mattie returned to time and time again and the corners of the earth her sister avoided with a violent urgency. It was so much more than such pedestrian matters as likes and dislikes, hopes and dreams, and secret smiles. Carmilla knew the ways time gathered unseen at the edges of her sister, the ghosts and the gestures that haunted her. More than that, Carmilla trusted that Mattie intimately understood how the years were slowly eroding Carmilla, probably more so than Carmilla herself.

And so Carmilla wasn’t fazed by the casual threats of murder Mattie tossed around the room. It was just the way Mattie was. She only killed when it fit her purposes. In the meantime, she was content to simply remind you that she could. Carmilla understood that the threats were often more enjoyable than the deaths, which were always somehow both strategic and impulsive. Her sister was in Styria for a purpose, which seemed more to do with the board than avenging their Mother. She would leave as soon as it was completed and with a significantly smaller body count than she led one to expect. Mattie never lingered in Austria more than necessary, no matter how Carmilla had begged and pleaded over the centuries.

It was a slow, visible progression of understanding as Mattie leaned in to affectionately pinch Carmilla’s nose and explain, as she had countless times over the century, that Carmilla was “lucky she was such a cute little monster.” Mattie's nose crinkled even before she noticed the two blood stained cups and the lingering scent in the air. She paused as she withdrew her hand, her affectionate smile disappearing behind trepidation and then a recognition that glistened with a suspicious knowing. Even before her eyes darted to Laura, the silly human who had mostly escaped her close scrutiny, Mattie had all the confirmation she needed. Carmilla’s secrets never lasted long around her older sister.

“Kitty cat, you didn’t,” Mattie gasped scandalized. “I can’t believe you! How utterly cliche and trite.” Mattie’s face belayed both her amusement and judgement, as if Laura was the dirtiest piece of gossip she had discovered in centuries.

“It wasn’t like that,” Carmilla protested, trying to contain the situation. “Mattie, I’m serious. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not like that.”

Mattie beamed with mischievous amusement, glistening with a newly learned secret. “I can’t believe you finally did it, darling. Always the romantic, you swore—”

“She died,” Carmilla protested weakly in an attempt to cut Mattie off.

“Well, naturally. How else would it work?” Mattie frowned, momentarily becoming serious before returning to her teasing demeanor. “And you tell me that no one said anything about love. Turning your dearly departed girlfriend into a vampire sort of makes the whole conversations moot, don’t you think?” Mattie laughed, once again playfully pinching Carmilla’s nose and shaking her head affectionately as if to say, ‘you lovable idiot,’ before she once again turned to leave. However there was a hesitation, an underlying sense of worry behind her words that she chose, for now, to brush aside with a final admonishment.

“Oh, and try to keep the larceny to a minimum. A lot of Mother’s things are literally priceless and I don’t feel like tracking it down in some shabby little pawn shop.”

* * *

 

Carmilla wandered through her Mother’s apartment, lingering in front of shelves and examining items that seemed to clutter every surface. The apartment felt as if She had never left. It felt like her Mother had stepped out for a moment, that She was behind the next corner, or off in the other room with Will. The apartment still hummed with the expectation that She would be back any second with that look of murderous affection.

In the first few days there, Carmilla had taken to moving items around. Nothing too large or noticeable at first, just simple acts of rebellion in an attempt to break the spell that her Mother still seemed to hold over the apartment. These small attempts of quietly asserting ownership were even lazy in how Carmilla rearranged a bookshelf or hid a small statue she never liked.

In the end, it never mattered what she moved. Within the day, through no effort of her own, the object was back to where it had originally belonged.

And so, Carmilla became aggressive. An upstairs table was moved downstairs. A trinket was relocated to the Robespierre building. Silverware was left out in the rain underneath a shrub. Keys belonging to the assortment of chains throughout the apartment were scattered in the solarium. By evening, order would always be restored.

Carmilla felt herself slowly going mad. Madness was preferred to the slowly growing doubt of her Mother’s death creeping into her bones. It was senseless paranoia that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up, a strange form of grief to start believing that her Mother was only quietly biding her time in the shadows.

It was with a wave of relief when, while waiting for Laura to get out of the shower, Carmilla walked in on Perry returning the goblets that she had just hidden underneath the stairs. Carmilla leaned against the doorframe and watched the highly strung redhead fuss about in the cabinets. When Perry finally noticed Carmilla with a jolt and nearly dropped one of the goblets, Carmilla lifted an eyebrow in greeting.

“It’s like these things simply get up and walk about on their own.” Perry shook her head in disbelief as if confused why one item would ever desire to be anywhere than where the Dean had placed them.

“Guess this means I haven’t found my calling in interior design.”

“It just seems like the Dean probably had her reasons for where everything went.” Perry crossed her arms, almost as if challenging Carmilla to disagree. “Who knows what we might accidentally set off by rearranging the Sumerian artifacts in the upstairs bathroom.” An act Carmilla had committed only yesterday. “I’d rather avoid another… incident.” It was the closest Perry had ever come to directly mentioning when they first met.

“Yeah, I don’t really think her reasons had anything to do with feng shui,” Carmilla noted before signaling a truce with a gesture from her hand. What did Carmilla care anyway? Her definition of an ideal place to stay was a roof over her head, a decent place to store blood, and a comfortable place to read. If Perry wanted to maintain the Dean’s decorating decisions, who was Carmilla to protest? She had everything she needed in terms of accommodations. “But you’re probably right. I’d hate to have her come back and haunt me because of poor goblet placement.”

“I think she’d probably have a few other reasons besides goblet placement.” Perry’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Fair. I’m not really winning any awards for best daughter of the century.” Carmilla tapped her finger against the kitchen counter two, three times before moving off into the next room.

After that, Carmilla no longer rearranged the apartment. She didn’t stop touching though. She continued to pick up objects that had used to scare her, testing their weight in her palm, holding them up to the light, and trying to figure out where their power had come from. Perhaps it was the impossibility of telling the difference between a knick knack or souvenir and a magical and undoubtably deadly object. Perhaps it was merely the connection to her Mother. It had always been safer to look and never touch.

But now Carmilla touched everything and tried to take their power away.

Over the centuries, she had learned it was best not to own anything, to not grow too attached. As a vampire, hers was a transitory existence. People came and went like the weather and like her Mother’s moods. Mobility was prized over mementos, lingering left too much room for people to creep into her heart and take root like a virus. Once there, they would never truly leave, haunting her with remembered words and never disappearing gestures. Their loss was permanent, an eternal chipping away at the heart of her, molding her existence into last times together and first times without all poorly strung together by all those little moments that were too hard to count. Sentimentality had always seemed like a weakness, one that she was especially prone to and was constantly trying to compensate for. There was no point to becoming attached when the loss would far outweigh the length of any contact.

How many hundreds of years had she lived out of one bag of constantly shifting necessities? Even the bag itself had changed with the decades.

But here was all her Mother’s things, a collection of riches reaching back well over thousands of years. Her Mother had grown attached, had collected items, and had turned countless people into vampires. Her Mother had held onto things so Carmilla never had to.

“I was serious about the larceny,” Mattie’s voice came up behind Carmilla as she placed an arm around Carmilla’s shoulder.

“Mattie,” Carmilla smiled, returning the ceremonial dagger back onto the bookshelf as she leaned into her sister. Their relationship had shifted over time but the underlying affection had never changed. There had been times when Mattie would have rested her hand on Carmilla’s waist like a possessive lover, decades where they had held hands tenderly, periods were they barely touched at all. “I’m feeling like a sentimental fool today.”

“Oh god, when are you not?” Mattie responded with affectionate melodrama.

“More than usual then,” Carmilla confessed with a faint, comfortable smile.

“You poor little monster, that sounds unpleasant.” Mattie frowned playfully before conceding, “Though I guess living in sin in Maman’s apartment with her murderer might have that affect.”

Carmilla reached out and lightly traced her fingertips across the spines of the books. “Not much has changed, has it?”

“Maman’s dead, Nemo’s pal is awake, and you’ve turned your walking dinner date into a vampire. Your sense of the status quo is questionable at best, darling.”

“You’re here. I always feel better when you’re here.” Carmilla shifted the conversation with a distant smile.

“That’s because you’re a far better vampire when you’re around me. And, as much as I am loathe to admit it, it’s not too hard to figure out why her little kaiserin was always Maman’s favorite.”

“Her favorite minion you mean,” Carmilla mumbled.

“Minion, you? She practically moved time and space itself to ensure you had your beloved German chocolate every day.” Mattie shook her head, her voice dark with familiar jealousy.

“German chocolate in exchange for absolute obedience, a fairly cheap price if you think about it. Live with this family, kidnap this girl, do this, kill that. Don’t worry, here, have a chocolate. God, I was such a fool. Even after she buried me alive, I still followed her orders.”

“You did run at her with the Blade of Hastur. Frankly I thought it was about time for a bit more rebellion on your part, though maybe not quite so dramatic. She had you practically de-fanged before the whole incident with that blonde corset of yours. You and Will both, it was almost sickening how you two would follow her around like lost, little puppies…”

“The perfect, obedient little girl,” Carmilla exhaled. “Even now, I haven’t stopped following orders, have I?”

“When will you ever learn to stop caring so much for your food?” Mattie shook her head, as if bored by the all too common plight.

“She’s not—…”

“Not anymore anyway.”

“Mattie, I’m serious.”

“Then say something so I’ll take you seriously,” Mattie’s tone, while affectionate, was exhausted.

“I thought after Mother died, I’d feel free. Except… I’m still following orders, still… trying and coming up empty.”

“Oh my darling little monster, there is no such thing as being free.” Mattie looked sad and wistful, even a little disappointed. “You should at least know that by now.”

“Even you?” Carmilla looked up at her older sister with adoration, unable to imagine someone like Mattie content to abide by any imprisonment for long.

“Who do you think I am, kitty cat? Even Mother wasn’t free. Hell, even that fish god isn’t free. If a god can’t free itself from a silly little crater then, well, what hope is there for the rest of us?” Mattie tipped her head to the side. “It’s best not to worry too much about it. It’s all rather pointless.”

“You’re such a utilitarian.”

“Says the nihilist. Maybe if you allowed the world to have some meaning for once, you’d start making smarter choices about who you follow into battle.”

Laura, who had been rushing up the stairwell taking two steps at a time, paused at the sight at the top: the two sisters platonically leaning against each other, pinky fingers interlocked. “Carm, I…”

“Speak of the changeling and she appears.” Mattie turned around, her charming smile beaming from her features. “Lolita, I was just coming to look for you. It’s time for our broadcast, is it not?”

Laura forced a far more stilted smile. “It is.”

“Lovely, then shall we?” Mattie motioned downstairs to where the video equipment was already all set up and waiting. It was with affectionate hesitation that she let Carmilla’s finger slip from her grasp.

* * *

 

“Former Countess Karnstein,” Laura greeted Carmilla as she appeared in the solarium doorway with two cups of blood.

“Still going on about that, I see.” Carmilla sat down broodily. “I’m going to have to start demanding to be treated as such. I’ve always missed having servants.”

“You massacred his family,” Laura observed as she accepted the offered mug.

“Bygones,” Carmilla spoke into the night air, trying to sound as casual as possible. There was an undercurrent of pain she had become skilled at pushing down, but traces of it still remained in the subtle edge of her voice. “Aren’t you the one who keeps saying I’ve changed, that I’m the hero who saved Silas? Or am I the villain who turned you into the vampire tonight?”

“Carm…” Laura closed her eyes, pausing for a moment before trying a different angle. “Back at the hospital, you said that your Mother used your fiancé as the blood price. That was Vordenberg’s ancestor, wasn’t it?”

Carmilla scratched away at small imperfection on her cup with her thumb, trying to hold back the temptation to return back into the house as a means to escape this conversation. “Engagements were different back then.”

“Is that why you massacred his family?”

“Do you really think that, even as a vampire, my _disliking_ of my betrothed was legitimate grounds for a supposed massacre?” After all this time, was that really what Laura thought of it, of her?

“No, but maybe the blood price…”

“This is about LaFontaine.” The realization and accompanying relief washed over Carmilla, visible in her voice and how she held her shoulders.

Laura nodded, her voice desperate. “If you felt this hunger,” her hand clenched in front of her chest as if it to illustrate, “this need for his family’s blood, I mean, I get it. I don’t want to but I understand. But then how did you leave him alive? And all these centuries with the rest of his bloodline still at Silas and so nearby? How did you not…? A part of me wants to feel hopeful right now, but I just don’t know how you do it.” And then, in a quieter voice. “How I’ll do it.”

“It’s a part of who we are. After a while, the brightness… dims. You get used to living at a different volume and it stops seeming so loud. You’ll see.”

“So… by the time LaFontaine dies of old age, this hunger… this need might not exist?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Thanks, that’s completely _not_ reassuring.” Still, Laura leaned up against Carmilla and nuzzled into the crook of the older vampire’s neck. But there was comfort to be found even if Carmilla wouldn’t outwardly offer it. Carmilla had shown control and restraint all these centuries with the Vordenbergs. Perhaps Laura could too with LaFontaine. “Can’t you at least tell me that it will be all right?”

Will it?

“It will,” Carmilla sighed, giving in to Laura despite all sense and logic. The words sounded hollow to her ears. “It will be all right.”

* * *

 

Outside the sun was so violently bright Carmilla was tempted to shut the blinds. If it was just her and Laura, she would have done so over an hour ago. The boxes, scattered files, and half opened books covered nearly every surface in the room making it hard for Carmilla to sprawl out comfortably. She tried to thumb through the book Laura had handed her from the piles but found the minutes to board meetings from over thirty years ago to be extremely dull. She found herself longing instead for an overly didactic philosophical track, or anything really that held the faintest glimmer of being remotely interesting. But mostly she wanted everyone to believe her when she tried to explain that just as she wasn’t the hero, Mattie wasn’t the villain in this piece either.

Danny stood up, wiping the book dust off her pants. Making eye contact with Laura, who seemed just as bored as Carmilla but far more determined to push through, Danny nodded towards the door with her head. “Wanna come?”

Laura’s face scrunched in confusion at Danny’s offer.

“The Summer’s event I told you about,” Danny prompted as if afraid that by clarifying any further, Carmilla would somehow sprout interest against all rhyme and reason and wish to join as well.

“Oh.” Laura tossed a look at the window. Her eyes squinted against the brightness of the day. “Thanks but I think I’m good. I want to try to get through more of this.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, go on ahead.” Laura waved her on with a forced casualness.

“Ok, well, don’t turn too much into a vampire.” Danny smiled lightheartedly.

Laura’s whole body went rigid as all the color drained from her face. Carmilla, who had instantly sat up straighter, kept her eyes locked on Laura.

Laura’s voice was tight and measured. “What did you say?”

“It was a joke.” Danny held up her hands in a mock truce. “Dating a vampire is making you a bit of a shut in, that’s all. Some sun and fresh air might do you some good now and then.”

“I just really want to get through this, ok?” Laura’s body visibly relaxed.

“You do look a little pale, sundance,” Carmilla observed unhelpfully.

“It’s winter, it’s natural to be a bit paler,” Laura shot back with a pointed glare.

“If you change your mind, you know where to find us,” Danny called over her shoulder before walking out the door.

“You suck.” Laura glared as the door clicked shut behind Danny.

“Might I remind you, so do you.” Carmilla turned the page in her book, her words distant but her eyes regarded Laura with a shy curiosity.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “There's nothing we fear more than our own Reflection. We scream at the monsters within us, hidden deep within our hearts. We run and hide from the terrors all around us - the different mirrors that we see.”  
> ―  
> Solange nicole

In careful block letters, Laura inscribed the word VAMPIRE across the steam collecting on the bathroom mirror. She allowed herself to be briefly mesmerized by how the letters began to drip down to the edge of the mirror before she wiped away all traces of the word. Face-to-face with her own reflection where the word once was, she felt the now familiar sense of disgust rising. To push it back down, she stuck her tongue out, scrunched up her face, and made several funny faces. She traced the outline of her fangs with her tongue and performed a quick inventory of all her scars that she could remember. Here is where she tried to clean up shattered glass too quickly. Here is where she split open her chin after trying to sled down the stairs in a cardboard box. Here is where her skin tore and ripped and snagged on sharp objects and healed only enough to leave an inventory of a life lived. Here is where she tried to remember all that she lost. Here is where she remembered that she was once human.

She didn’t know what she was now. Vampire was a deceptively simple sounding word. It felt heavier and more complicated than the two syllables could ever properly express.

A knock on the door interrupted what Laura knew to be the increasingly longer time she spent in the bathroom. As a human, her showers were quick, functional, long enough to hum a song or two under her breath as she washed and rinsed her hair. As a vampire, she lingered under the spray wishing it’d wash the mountain away. Barely toweled dry with still damp skin, she would examine the subtle signs of her death. She kept waiting for the “vampire, so cool!” part of her brain to kick in, but days turned into weeks and all she felt was shame.

After adjusting the towel securely around her chest, she opened the bathroom door. Her retort to Carmilla’s impatience remained perched on her lips, however, as she found herself face to face with a fully dressed LaFontaine, who looked as uncomfortable as Laura felt.

“Oh,” Laura let out a gasp of surprise.

The towel slung over LaFontaine’s shoulder matched the one wrapped around Laura, the Dean’s matching towels further underscoring the awkwardness of the moment. Laura couldn’t remember the last time the two of them were alone together. And then she did. It was when she breathed out of necessity and not out of habit.

“Hey.” LaFontaine partially blocked Laura’s exit. They tried to catch Laura’s eye, who was frantically trying to look anywhere but directly at LaFontaine.

“Uh, hi,” Laura mumbled as she flattening herself against door frame and shimmied past, managing to avoid any bodily contact.

“Laura…” LaFontaine’s face dropped as Laura did not so much as pause or look behind her.

“Yeah, uh, sorry about taking so long. Think there’s still hot water though. Enjoy your shower!” Laura called over her shoulder as she dashed down the stairs at a vampire speed, removing any chance of an actual conversation.

Closing the bedroom door behind her, Laura leaned against the wall praying for a sense of relief that wasn’t coming. The calm she sought was thwarted by a growing tremor in her hands. There was a strange sensation uncoiling in her stomach, a foggy dizziness claiming the edges of mind, a tense anticipation rising on the back on the neck.

“Is there any hot water—…” Carmilla looked up from her book, the rest of her sentence forgotten as she carelessly flung her book onto the bed as she jumped up and surged towards Laura. She stopped abruptly, only inches away from actually reaching out and touching Laura. With an anxious nervousness, Carmilla instead inspected her girlfriend with her eyes. “Are you okay?”

“I…” Laura’s eyes locked on her hands, willing them to behave, willing them to hang limply, to become still, to listen to her on some level. Her voice shook almost as much as her hands. “I, I can’t… I can’t stop.”

“Have you eaten?”

“Last night I….” Laura couldn’t finish her sentence. Despite having no real need for oxygen, her lungs seemed to burn from the lack of it, from an all-consuming desperation. But she couldn’t remember how to inhale, how to breathe, and instead began mimicking a panicky urgency to swallow the air. It felt like her entire body, her entire world was unraveling.

Carmilla rushed back to the bed stand, a ‘damn it’ whispered underneath her breath, and returned with a full cup of blood. “Here. Take this.”

But Laura couldn’t hold the cup steady. Blood splashed erratically over the edges, spilling onto her hand, staining the towel, her skin, Carmilla’s shirt, the carpet.

“Let me.” Carmilla slowly, tenderly took the mug back. With a practiced skill, she cradled the back of Laura’s head and slowly tipped the blood into Laura’s mouth. Laura wasn’t sure she ever wanted to ask when Carmilla had done this before, how many times, or why.

“You don’t get like this after only a couple of hours.” Laura protested.

“Last night was more than a couple of hours ago.” There was a worried look underscoring Carmilla’s observation. The cup drained and with the shaking now under control, Carmilla withdrew her hand.

Laura slid down the wall into a ball on the floor, not caring for her still wet hair and the lack of modesty afforded to her by the towel. She marveled at the stillness of her own body, at the control she could once again exert over it, and at the strength so freely flowing within after so quickly deteriorating. Carmilla joined her on the floor, sitting cross-legged directly across from her a small distance away. Always now she maintained this space between them, as if Laura was some fragile monster.

“Is that why you always have two glasses with you? For me?” Laura rubbed at the blood stain on her towel as she tried to ignore the blood on her hand and the overwhelming urge to lick it off.

“Technically, they’re for both of us, cupcake. But yes.” Carmilla conceded with a tip of her head. “Especially with…”

“Especially with LaFontaine,” Laura muttered darkly. Carmilla only nodded in response. “I can’t… I can’t do this. I don’t know how I can. I was fine, I swear, until I saw them… I’m a mess. I wasn’t even hungry. Ten seconds in LaFontaine’s company and I’m convulsing mess. Even now I want to…” It wasn’t lost on either women that Laura’s eyes hadn’t left the blood on her hand.

Carmilla reached out, breaking her own rule as she brushed Laura’s wet hair aside, cupping her face and tenderly stroking her cheek with her thumb. “Everyone’s a mess.”

“Well, that’s comforting.” Laura rolled her eyes, but despite her sarcasm, Carmilla’s words did seem to help somewhat.

“You’re my mess.” Carmilla smiled sadly, affectionately. “Or, at least…”

Laura lunged forward, crashing their lips together with such urgency that Carmilla, completely caught off guard, found herself tumbling backwards onto the floor. With one hand steadying herself, Laura’s other hand made quick work of the knot holding Carmilla’s robe together. Her eyes hungrily took in Carmilla’s pale, exposed skin before her. The feeling in the room shifted completely as Laura boldly cupped Carmilla’s naked breast, flicking her nipple slightly with her bloody thumb. Carmilla arched up into the touch, biting back whatever noise was lodged in her throat, before quickly her shifting weight. Laura’s eagerness left a smudged trail of red against her lover’s pale skin. Laura unconsciously bit her lip.

With a swift deftness, Laura suddenly found herself on the floor looking up at Carmilla. Pinned to the ground, Laura squirmed and tried to return their bodies to how they were before. Carmilla stoically held her down, not so much issuing a challenge as her dark eyes carefully examined Laura. Her robe billowed open and afforded Carmilla no modesty, but it was Laura who felt vulnerable under Carmilla’s piercing gaze. Laura was aware of how precariously her towel still hung to her body, how their proximity alone was holding it up, how she felt utterly naked underneath Carmilla’s compassionate, knowing eyes. She was painfully aware of the blood stain she had left on Carmilla’s chest and how she wanted to, on multiple levels, lick it off. Laura soon stopped her half-hearted efforts to break free, and instead made eye contact with Carmilla, willing her to do or not do whatever it was she was deciding on. Impatient, she bucked her hips upward in hopes to bring Carmilla back down from her revelry.

Finally either satisfied or acquiesced, Carmilla leaned down and captured Laura’s lips with the same ferocity and hunger of the initial embrace. She shifted slightly, her hands no longer holding Laura’s arms still, her thigh slipping in between Laura’s legs. However, she did not give up her position no matter how Laura tried to supplant her. Laura’s towel did not last much longer, but that was through Laura’s own efforts to thoroughly disrobe them both.

* * *

 

Somehow they ended up back on the bed with their limbs lazily entangled. Laura had mostly forgotten that this had once been the Dean’s bed. Had they not claimed it as their own by now or did some shadow of Carmilla’s Mother cling to the sheets even now?

After complaints that she was making their shared pillow wet, Laura instead rested her head on Carmilla’s chest. Carmilla was now playing with the offending damp hair as Laura lightly drew designs across Carmilla’s rib cage. Occasionally a finger lazily traveled down past Carmilla’s bellybutton before circling back up around at Carmilla’s hip bone. Laura’s eyes would time to time return to what was left of blood stain on Carmilla’s breast.

They had never seen each other entirely naked before. Not in the awkward sharing a room as contentious roommates or through all other growths and developments in their complicated relationship. There has always been some garment, some piece of clothing that had remained. At the time it had made sense, some strange form of logic or self-consciousness that seemed foreign to Laura now. She marveled at the other woman’s body, at the softness of Carmilla’s skin despite the taunt muscles underneath. She wondered at the scars that Carmilla claimed she was too old to remember how they came about. There was something in the shadow of her protests, however, that led Laura believe that some Carmilla only wished she had forgotten.

She felt Carmilla’s body bend and shift underneath her before feeling the weight of a kiss on her forehead. There was a tenderness in how Carmilla’s lips lingered that surprised Laura even now, so different this Carmilla seemed from the nightmare in leather she first appeared to be.

“I know… I know it’s kind of messed up right now with you and me, but I want you to know… I do, I do still care.” Laura spoke softly, practically whispering into Carmilla’s collar bone.

“Laura,” the door burst open. “We need to— Oh. OH.” LaFontaine, fully dressed, covered their eyes, horrified. “Sorry.”

“God damn it,” Carmilla practically growled, trying to shield both her and Laura’s bodies with one arm while the other reached and searched unsuccessfully for the blanket that had tumbled unnoticed to the floor earlier.

“Oh god.” Laura curled up further into Carmilla, away from LaFontaine’s prying eyes and exposed neck.

Eyes still covered by their hands, LaFontaine slowly backed out of the room. “Laura, we need to talk.”

Carmilla threw a pillow against the doorframe. “Later!”

“Later.” LaFontaine agreed as they closed the door behind them.

“I don’t understand how LaFontaine can reanimate my useless brother’s corpse and yet fail to master the basic concept of privacy. Knocking, this is still a thing you do in this century, correct?”

* * *

 

Mattie tipped her head to the side quizzically, making no attempts to hide her overt curiosity. Laura had caught Mattie observing her like this with increasing frequency and it made her uncomfortable. She tried to ignore Carmilla’s sister overt attention as she turned off the video camera to little success.

“Fascinating,” Mattie finally remarked after Perry had delivered the hot chocolate and fled. “Your pro-human bias is near pathological in its delusion.”

“What are you talking about?” Laura narrowed her eyes, gearing up for a fight. “Your blasé, devil may care but you sure don’t PR attitude is literally putting students lives in danger.”

“You take their side, their causes as if they’re still your own. This need you have to pretend that you’re still human is worrisome. And how you cling to this inane concept that humans are inherently good and vampires are evil is dumbfounding. You act as if we’re the worst thing to happen to this campus.”

“Well, yeah.” Laura shrugged, her eyes darting to Carmilla, who seemed to be once again studiously ignoring them on the daybed.

“Darling, there wouldn’t even _be_ a campus without us. With her.” Mattie grinned before moving in for the kill. “So are you saying that our dear Carmilla, heroic savior of the campus, is also evil?”

“Well… she’s changed.” Laura shifted uncomfortably.

“Come now, and you? You’re among our illustrious ranks now, least you forget.”

Laura opened her mouth, but Mattie had no intention of waiting long enough for a response.

“Don’t be so naive. This childish line of reasoning you have is more than a little suspect when you hold it up to the dimmest of lights, Gidget. Open your eyes before this foolishness get someone hurt.” And with that Mattie turned, placing her untouched hot chocolate back on the table, her tone immediately turning more cheerful as she turned her attention to Carmilla. “See you next broadcast, little monster.”

Carmilla looked up over her book and waved at her sister’s exit.

After Mattie left, Laura directed her full attention to her girlfriend, who had returned to her book. “I can’t believe you let her talk to me like that.”

Carmilla left her book open beside her. “There is no ‘let’ with Mattie. And besides, all she was saying is that maybe it’d be a good idea for you to loosen up on the whole ‘vampires are evil’ thing considering.”

“So you’re taking her side now?”

“Laura, there is no side here. If you think all vampires are monsters then….” Carmilla paused, her eyes searching Laura with a new desperation. Or rather, a familiar desperation with a sharper vulnerability.“Do you really think that? After all this, _even now_?”

Laura didn’t reply, her face a mixture of hesitation, confusion, and disgust.

“Am I secretly that despicable to you?” Carmilla stood up, book in hand, her index finger marking her spot. “And what I did to you, do you really feel like it was a damnation on your soul to a lifetime of what, sin and depravity?”

“Carm, I… I didn’t… I don’t know what I think, ok?”

“Laura, you have an opinion on everything,” Carmilla scoffed. “Do you know what I think?”

Laura could see the wall forming, her girlfriend’s eyes closing off as her voice grew cold. “Carm….”

“ _I_ think you need to remember who your dad was trying to protect you from for all those years. Bear spray and Krav Maga are not effective vampire deterrents, Laura, but they work wonders on humans.” Carmilla’s voice rose as she approached Laura. “It’s not so simple as these little check boxes you have in your head that say vampire bad and human good.” Carmilla flung her book to the floor. “Damn it. You need to stop punishing me for making you into something I didn’t and stop believing that you’re some monster that you aren’t.”

“You turned me into a _vampire_!” Laura shouted the words that had felt eternally perched on her lips since waking up on the mountain and realizing she had died.

“Not evil,” Carmilla shot back.

“Vampire!” Laura gestured at herself, gripping the air in anger and allowing herself to truly yell for the first time since the mountain top.

“I didn’t turn you into a hateful and judgmental child. That you’re doing all on all your own, princess.” Carmilla turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.

“Carm, Carm wait.”

Carmilla did not wait. She did not even slow her stride.

Laura flopped on the daybed, landing on the familiar dent left behind by her girlfriend’s body, and let out a large groan. She shook her fists in the air for a few frustrated seconds as felt the tears threatening to form in her eyes and focused, with only limited success, in pushing them down.

“Laura?” LaFontaine tentatively peaked into the room a few minutes later.

“Not really a good time right now,” Laura snapped as she flung an arm over her face.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Peachy. Apparently I’m just a hateful little girl who doesn’t understand anything,” Laura sighed darkly, trembling underneath her frustration. “But you know, also a vampire so maybe that should maybe be expected.”

“Well that doesn’t sound fun.” Laura couldn’t see exactly where LaFontaine had moved, but they were closer into the room now. Almost within arm’s reach by the smell of it. Laura felt the hair on her arms stand up in anticipation. “But you know, fangs are cool or whatever. Do you want to help Jeep and I with an experiment? Could help take your mind off things. Always works for me.”

Laura, eyes still covered by the crook of her elbow, frowned. “No, I better not. I… I should go and try to work things out with Carmilla.” She sat up, her eyes lingering on the doorframe Carmilla had exited through. Both were excruciatingly aware that Laura had yet to look directly at LaFontaine.

“Laura…”

“Yes?” Laura closed her eyes before directing her attention back to LaFontaine.

“Is everything ok?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. Carmilla and I, we’ll will work it out.”

“No, I mean, is everything ok with us. I can’t help but feel you’re avoiding me.”

Laura sighed, speaking as if on a broken record. “This really isn’t a good time, LaFontaine.”

“It’s just, you and Carmilla seem to be… whatever it is that you’re doing and you talk to Perry, but you barely even look at me. First you, and then Perry…”

Laura’s heart plummeted between her feet. “It’s not like that. It’s just… I’m just getting used to this whole vampire thing, you know? Still figuring out ground rules, you know, boundaries and all that.”

LaFontaine regarded Laura for a moment, as if distrusting the response and deciding whether to challenge it or not. After a moment of hesitation, they nodded with the slightest movement of their head. “Maybe after this whole Mattie trying to sell a portion of the student’s bodies thing is over, I’ll have time to do a comparison study between all the different vampires.”

Laura exhaled heavily. “It’s supposed to be a secret. I’m supposed to be a secret.”

“I’d change the names in my notes,” LaFontaine promised with a careless earnestly.

“I’m gonna go find Carmilla now.” Laura forced a stilted smile before motioning to the direction of Carmilla’s exit. “And in the mean time, maybe you could stop bringing people back from the dead until we can all readjust the present reality?”

With a pained swallow, LaFontaine nodded. Only then did Laura realize the cruelty of her statement. But not enough to regret it or wish she could take it back.

How could Laura explain that LaFontaine felt like a missing piece to the ravenous void Laura had felt within herself every second since her rebirth? That instead of feeling her death within her bones, all she felt was a craving for LaFontaine’s blood? For LaFontaine’s death to fill the emptiness of where own her death used to be. Would she, she wondered, feel less hollow if she ever did so? Would it be worth it to find out, even if the answer was no?

* * *

 

It had been hours since Carmilla had stormed off. Truth be told, Laura had not gone looking for her. There was no need. Carmilla was more than likely curled up in one of the corners of the solarium, soaking up the warmth of the indirect sun and fuming. As the day progressed, Laura had mostly preoccupied herself with avoiding both LaFontaine and her own thoughts. As the hours collapsed into the night, the apartment seemed like it was occupied by a strange and unwanted stalemate, the uncomfortable opposite of hide and go seek. Laura did not dare go up and find Carmilla in the solarium, terrified of only finding Carmilla with one mug of blood instead of two. Carmilla seemed far too upset to venture down into the house to find Laura.

Laura leaned up against the kitchen counter, half lost in thought as she picked at a small splatter of dried blood that stained the counter top with her fingernail. Part of her wanted to believe that the drops had been spilled unnoticed while either she or Carmilla were pouring the blood bags out into cups. Though it was just as likely that Carmilla had noticed the blood had been spilled and simply didn’t care enough to wipe it away. However this was the Dean’s house. It was far more likely that these blood stains were far older than their current occupation and had a far more nefarious origin.

As if the blood she and Carmilla drank daily was really all that innocent to begin with.

While she heard the soft foot steps of the familiar pair of boots behind her, Laura was still surprised when she felt the weight of Carmilla pressed up against her, unsure what had prompted this unexpected affection. Maybe just this once they wouldn’t need to figure it out and all could be considered forgiven. Openly admitting how much she craved the touch, Laura leaned into Carmilla and closed her eyes, allowing Carmilla to fill her senses. Even before becoming a vampire, Laura had been enamored with how her girlfriend smelled of dark chocolate with metallic whispers of blood. It still seemed a mystery how Carmilla could smell like the snow melting and the moments right before the rainfall. There were others Laura was only beginning to unravel and understand. It was if the centuries had gathered on her girlfriend’s skin in scent only, lingering in a way that time otherwise never could. Laura wondered if she’d ever be able to place a name to every scent but part of her hoped that at least some aspect would always remain elusive.

Carmilla’s free hand slid down to Laura’s wrist, gripping it loosely, her thumb tracing a path back and forth across Laura’s veins. When she spoke, it was half whispered into Laura’s ear, her breath curling down Laura’s neck.

“It’s a world in itself, the way the blood flows through veins. It is its own language, one you know by instinct. You can feel it every time you feed, the threshold between life and death. You only have to learn to trust yourself and trust your instincts.”

Carmilla’s hold loosened on Laura’s wrist before her hand trailed up and around Laura’s body. Her fingers paused, lingering at different pressure points as she whispered the strengths and flaws of each to an attentive audience. Intellectually, distantly Laura wanted to be horrified, to be sickened by this strange tutorial on how to feed off a person. Even pressed up against the counter, Laura could easily break free if she wanted.

If she wanted.

Instead, Laura found herself poised on the edge of Carmilla’s every words, entirely aware of how Carmilla’s words and actions were affecting her. She craved each word in a way she never allowed herself to openly crave the action itself. It was an unspoken desire that filled almost every waking moment, the feral need for the sensation of skin breaking beneath her fangs and the hot rush of blood flowing.

Finally, Carmilla’s feather touch traced it’s way up to Laura’s neck, her other hand gently guiding Laura’s head so it exposed the veins further to her fingers. Carmilla placed a kiss where her fingers were not a moment before, her exposed fangs scrapping softly against the vulnerable skin, her mouth sucking and pulling at the skin gently, hungrily. Laura unconsciously arched into the contact, straining for more. It was almost primal in how Carmilla guided Laura so that their faces were barely inches apart.

“Carm…” Laura breathed, not sure what she intended on saying, her body straining to close the small distance between them.

Carmilla moved in closer, her breath dancing across Laura’s neck.

“Laura?” LaFontaine stepped into the kitchen and then froze at the scene before them. “Well, finding you was easier than I thought.” They coughed uncomfortably. “Guess you two made up.”

Not quite looking up, Carmilla disentangled her limbs from Laura, instantly creating space and dispelling any sense of intimacy in the room. Between the shift and the sudden distance, Laura realized that all was not forgiven. Not even close.

“What’s up?” Laura turned around to face her old friend.

“Danny’s here.” LaFontaine pointed behind them. “It’s about time to head out. I thought you’d be getting ready….”

“Oh right. Let me go grab some things,” Laura motioned to the bedroom behind her.

It was cold enough that Laura wanted to wear a jacket. Carmilla had rolled her eyes with a slight shake of her head when Laura excused herself to get one, but said nothing about it as she followed Laura back to their room. Her body still vibrating from their encounter in the kitchen, Laura tried to ignore Carmilla as she fished the unnecessary layer out from the back of the closet they shared.

“You know, you can’t avoid it forever.” Carmilla sunk onto the bed as Laura rooted through their closet.

“Avoid what? Short sleeves in the winter?” Laura replied, distracted by the limited options presented before her. “Pretty sure I can. Clothing comes in all sorts of sleeve lengths these days.”

“Feeding.” Carmilla corrected, reminding Laura of just moments before. “Properly.”

Laura paused, her muscles tensed even as her face flushed with memories from the kitchen. It was a small mercy her back was to Carmilla. “Two for two. Watch me.” She turned around to face Carmilla, the unnecessary jacket now in hand and defiantly making eye contact.

Carmilla extracted herself from her lounging position on the bed to stand only a few inches away from Laura. “I am. You’re so tightly wound that one of these days you’re going to snap and kill the mad scientist.” Carmilla’s frown replied in volumes of concern and worry.“Let me show you. You don’t need to kill anyone, Laura. No one’s asking you that. Just… you need to take care of yourself before you end up going on a massacre that will haunt you. Trust me.”

“This isn’t the time for this conversation.” Laura, visibly shaken, pushed past Carmilla.

“It’s their funeral.”

Laura continued on her path to join the others, unsure if Carmilla meant the imaginary victims of this supposed massacre or LaFontaine.

* * *

 

The excursion, Danny’s idea, was supposed to be simple enough: a quick visit to the newspaper office for one final sweep. There had to be something that they had missed. Anything to tie Mattie or the board to the murders, explain the Corvae Corporation’s presence on campus, or could help prevent the selling of a portion of their bodies. It had to be all connected. Somehow. They just needed to uncover the missing piece.

One thing led to another, as they seemed prone to do at Silas. The impromptu detour by the crater quickly deteriorated and they were once again fleeing the scene. The campus was a poorly lit obstacle course of angry protestors, Corvae goons, and violent leftovers from the petty warlord days of the various student factions. The sun was starting to come up by the time they had a chance to catch their breath in the woods, still a half a mile away from the apartment.

“Land mines? Even at Silas, land mines? Seriously?” Laura shook her hands in exasperation at the harrowing hour before leaning up against a tree several fee away from Carmilla. Both were painfully aware that despite their proximity, the two vampires were too far apart to actually reach out and touch each other. The tension had been obvious all night, causing LaFontaine and Danny to exchange numerous eye rolls.

“I thought you neanderthals promised a ceasefire.” Carmilla flicked shreds of mutant mushroom off her arm with an air of disgusted annoyance, not even showing the smallest sign of fatigue.

“The cherry bomb land mines are all Zeta.” Danny, bent over and heaving, didn’t look up as she replied. Only too late did Laura realize she should have seemed more exhausted. “And I’m pretty sure they were set up before the ceasefire. Kirsch has been warning me to avoid that area for a while now.”

“Oh has he now? Then why did we just traipse through it, Xena?” Carmilla motioned at the ravaged ground behind them. “Was that your twisted amazon idea of fun? Does anyone here look like a lizard to you? I don’t know if you know this but vampires and humans, our limbs don’t grow back.”

“Jeep’s a lizard, apparently. I wonder if his limbs would grow back…” LaFontaine had collapsed to the ground, finally finding their voice after hungrily gasping for air for the past minute. They seemed to be speaking more to themselves than anyone in particular and, from their position, they were entirely oblivious to the odd looks they were now receiving. Of the entire group, Carmilla looked the most horrified but quickly shifted to a blasé expression as if remembering that she didn’t really care what happened to that particular body.

“It seemed like the quickest and easiest route to avoid the exploding fungal conflict.” Danny rationalized. “That actually shows some strategy on the Zeta’s part. Got to hand it to them, maybe they aren’t all beer, pizza, and death after all.”

“I’m pretty sure you can cover strategically placed cherry bombs under the death part.” Carmilla flicked what appeared to be the last remaining bit of mushroom in Laura’s general direction.

“I really need to try to come backand take samples of those mushrooms,” LaFontaine noted, their breathing now seemingly entirely under control.

“Between Danny and Carmilla, I’d say any potential samples have been fairly well pulverized.” Laura wiped the hair out of her face, trying to figure out if the mushroom flicked at her had managed to land in her hair or not. “You might have better luck with a mutant mushroom risotto.”

“I’m never eating mushrooms again. I’m so incredibly done with mushrooms.” Danny straightened up. Her eyes looked to find Laura and share the sentiment. Her demeanor instantly shifted, her voice suddenly full of concern. “Laura, there’s blood on your face.”

With a look of confusion, Laura reached up to examine her face but stopped when she identified the source of all the blood. Transfixed by the blood running down the palms of her hand, she couldn’t believe she barely felt any pain at all. The skin on her palms had been scrapped away in fairly sizable but shallow abrasions ringed by friction burns. Dirt and small pebbles were ground in her skin. Laura distantly noted that it was going to be annoying to dig them out later. Carmilla sidled up beside her, her concern quickly shifting to slight curiosity when she, too, realized the minor nature of the injury.

“Are you okay?” Danny took a few steps towards Laura, eyeing Carmilla suspiciously.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I must’ve scrapped my hands when I fell earlier. Didn’t notice from all the adrenaline.” Laura flipped her palms to face Danny in order to further demonstrate that it wasn’t really that bad. But also to say look I’m human, I bleed like you. It was strange to realize how normal her blood looked even now. Of course, her hands would be healed with barely trace by tomorrow. The hard part would be remembering to keep it bandaged up for longer in order to maintain the charade. “Probably looks worse than it is. I’ll take care of it when get back to the house.”

“We should clean that out now,” Danny insisted. “At least get some of the dirt out.”

“No, really, it’s fine.” Laura instinctually moved closer to Carmilla, looking for support.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Carmilla assessed, gently picking up Laura’s right hand, the worse off of the two. The look on Danny’s face almost made Carmilla want to lick the wound just for shock and entertainment value alone. What did Danny expect her to do, to be? She wasn’t some savage, blood thirsty animal. “Think she’ll live.”

“It could get infected. Our campus hospital doesn’t have a lot of antibiotics left,” Danny pointed out pragmatically. Laura didn’t want to explain that she would probably never need antibiotics again.

“And whose fault is that, agent orange?” Carmilla glared as Danny began to dig through her backpack and finally producing a bottle of water.

“Here, let me see your hand.” Danny made a come here gesture with her hand after twisting the cap off. Laura tentatively outstretched her right hand, not sure how to reasonably deny Danny something so simple, so human as basic wound care. Instantly she missed the warmth of Carmilla’s hand holding her own. It was with a wash of relief that Danny didn’t reach out and take her hand. It was with a quiet tenderness that Danny noted that “It might sting a bit.”

Might sting was an understatement. Laura nearly howled in pain the instant the water touched her skin. Her body convulsed upwards, tightening at the shock, before she crumbled to the ground. The burning, searing pain invaded her system and surged violently up her veins. Shefelt as if she was being devoured from within, as if death itself was violently trying to climb back into her body. Laura tightly gripped her wrist in an attempt to isolate the agony.

Crouched and curled up against the base of the tree, Laura pressed her face against the rough bark trying to center herself. Trying to hide her exposed fangs as she finally let out a silent scream of agony. Distantly she felt Carmilla cradle her in her arms. She had no idea what was happening, and at that moment she didn’t care. She only wanted, needed it, the pain, everything to stop. She could hear Danny frantic questioning over Carmilla’s hushed, calming whispers that tried to assure her that everything was going to be okay.

When Laura’s body stopped quivering as the intensity of the pain lessened to a more tolerable level and she felt her fangs recede, she rested her head momentarily on Carmilla to catch a breath she no longer needed. The relief was overwhelming, the violent pain a distant, threatening shadow. She pushed off Carmilla slightly, trying to steady herself, as she continued to stare at her hand. It had turned bright red. The friction burns had spread deeper across her skin following the path of the water.

“What were you thinking? What the hell was in that water bottle?” Carmilla snarled when it seemed that Laura was recovering, standing up, her shoulders already back, fists formed, ready for a fight.

When Laura finally turned around and looked up at the scene around her, Danny had pulled a second, different colored bottle of water out of her bag and was examining them both with a confused expression on her face. Her eyes flickered back and forth between Carmilla and Laura.

With the calm, fearful hesitation of a heroine in a horror film who just figured out the murderer was in the room, Danny released the second water bottle from her hand. It hit the ground with a soft thud before rolling several feet in front of her. Everyone’s eyes followed it as it only partially crossed the distance between her and Laura. Slowly, Danny poured some of the water from the first bottle into her hand. She stared at the liquid that benignly flowed through her fingers before flicking what was left at LaFontaine. LaFontaine’s face crinkled at the unexpected moisture, wiping it away quickly with an annoyed but otherwise unbothered motion.

Carmilla tipped her head to the side, realizing all too late what was about to happen next. Her eyes flashed behind her, finding Laura’s nervous gaze. The darker vampire’s face was a strange composition of the apologetic acceptance of the inevitable. Both silently watched Danny pour more of the water out into her hand. When Danny seemed like she was going to flick water in their directions, both Laura and Carmilla instantly recoiled. Laura was only vaguely aware of how Carmilla had placed her body even further between Danny and Laura.

The pain, the water never came.

Danny let the water slip through her fingers and wiped her hand against her trousers, her point made.

Laura stood up slowly, her heart beating in her head, a faint ringing in her ears.

“Laura, what’s going on?” Danny inquired, her voice low, trying to give Laura a chance, even now trying to give her a way out.

“I think you know.” Laura couldn’t look at Danny. She could barely look at Carmilla, who reached out and delicately held her bloodied and burned hand for support.

“Why do you have holy water?” Carmilla demanded into the silence.

“Perry gave it to me.” Danny didn’t take her eyes off Carmilla and Laura, still huddled together, like two peas in a pod. Two vampires caught in a secret, in a lie. “It seemed like a good idea. We’re always surrounded by vampires at this school. Will, JP, Mattie, Carmilla… _you._ ” Her eye raked over Laura, except this time it wasn’t out of desire or attraction, but out of disgust. Fear.

“Danny, I…” Laura started but wasn’t able to finish her sentence.

“When? How long?” Danny commanded, righteous anger rising. “Tell me _how long_.”

“Since the mountain.” The words came out more as a painful exhale than an actual confession.

“What did you do to her, you monster?” Danny lunged as Carmilla, grabbing her shirt in her fist, pulling Carmilla up to her tiptoes before she had time to react.

“I did what I had to do,” Carmilla’s eyes narrowed as she spoke through her teeth. She reached up and with an easy motion took Danny’s wrist in her hand and crushed it within her fist until Danny was forced to let go. Carmilla glared at Danny for a moment longer, before sending her backwards with violent force. It took several steps backwards for the redhead to recover her balance.

“I can’t believe we ever trusted you,” Danny gasped with pain and revulsion, gripping her wrist with her body curled inward. In the growing morning light, one could already see the hand-sized redness forming around her wrist. She turned to LaFontaine accusingly and exasperated. “You knew about this?”

“I helped.” LaFontaine emotionlessly held up the scars on their wrist. Healed, they looked far more like bite marks, the wounds Carmilla had inflicted to mask them had been far too shallow to leave any lasting remembrance behind. LaFontaine’s gaze flickered between Danny and Carmilla, unable to look at Laura, who seemed like she was about to tear herself apart from the inside out.

“We didn’t have a choice.” Carmilla crossed the distance Danny had placed between them. Danny picked up the dropped bottle of holy water and held it up threateningly. “Don’t tempt me, Xena. Even with that, you and I both know you don’t stand a chance.”

“Watch me, murderer.”

“With pleasure.” Carmilla raised her hand threateningly, poised to either knock the bottle away or strike Danny.

“STOP,” Laura shouted from where she was watching the scene devolve. She tried wiping the dirt off her knees but mostly only managed to smear her blood on her pants. Her voice somehow poised on the balance between commanding and pleading. “Will you two both just stop?”

Carmilla took a step back, both her hands up signaling a momentary truce, but her eyes locked dangerously on Danny.

“It wasn’t Carmilla’s fault. Danny, I _died_.” As Laura confessed, the fierceness of her tone melted away to a soft, defeated vulnerability. “She didn’t kill me or lure me into some eternal life of darkness. On the mountain, there was a tripwire, ironically some trap for vampires… I was dead the moment my body hit the ground.”

“You’re a vampire.” Danny spoke slowly, dubiously, as if still not wanting to believe it.

“I’m Laura first,” tears streamed down Laura’s face. “At least, I hope I still am.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?"  
> —   
> Dennis Lehane, Shutter Island

Carmilla understood it now, more so than she ever had. She understood why poets longed to burrow deep inside their lover’s ribcages and dwell there forever. It was a strange sort of realization to finally have in her fourth century. It made her feel uneasy; it made her feel at peace.

In the early afternoon light as Laura slumbered away, drooling ever so slightly on their shared pillow, Carmilla pondered ribcages. If she were to curl up inside her lover, the ribcage, she realized, was far from the ideal place. There was already too much there. Even if Laura’s heart was no longer beating and her lungs have mostly ceased to expand and contract, Carmilla had no desire to compete for space in such tight quarters. No. She would prefer to nestle elsewhere.

With a curious logic, she carefully catalogued the strengths and weaknesses of each body part as a potential new home. Laura’s legs and knees, like her feet and toes, were quickly dismissed for being too utilitarian. For being the physical embodiment of hello and farewell. Carmilla had no interest in being part of her lover’s footsteps, to always be enmeshed in the act of leaving something behind in the name of moving forward towards somewhere or someone else. Likewise, dwelling in her lover’s hands and fingers seemed too possessive even for her. And besides, it was an area far too prone to constant jostling. Laura’s ears seemed too intrusive of a home to ever even come up. The shoulders seemed closer to what Carmilla was looking for, but somehow not quite right. Like the elbows, they would be a far from restful home with how her lover gestured so passionately about the smallest of things.

It was so simple, so glaringly obvious when her eyes finally fell to Laura’s collarbones. The name, something pedestrian and unfitting, escaped her, but it was there in that notch, that gentle dip of bone where both collarbones met: home. It was there Carmilla wished to curl up and nestle comfortably in that skeletal ravine. She longed to languidly dangle her legs over the edge of the bone and watch the world go by from that crescent hollow. Perhaps she could find peace there. Perhaps that is where forgiveness lay. She traced her fingertips lightly over the spot.

“Carm…” Laura’s sleepy voice mumbled.

Carmilla stopped but did not look up from where her hand rested lightly on the spot, smiling slightly as she felt Laura’s voice through her fingertips. Yes. This is where she would like to spend eternity, in this bed in the early afternoon light contemplating the space between Laura’s collarbone.

“It’s early,” Laura continued to grumble without opening her eyes. Her body was more and more adjusting to a vampire’s timetable of late nights and never seen mornings. “What are you doing awake?”

“Trying to remember a word,” Carmilla’s voice was practically a whisper. “Do you remember what this is call?” She casually tapped the space she had been contemplating on Laura’s chest two, three times. She offered no further explanation. It was suddenly important to hide how cherished this body part had become to her in the last several minutes.

“I don’t know, Carm,” Laura’s groaned, her voice still heavy with sleepiness. “It’s where the collarbone meets the ribcage. Why?”

“No reason.” Carmilla smiled distantly before kissing the top of Laura’s head. “Go back to sleep. It’s early yet.”

So the ribcage after all.

* * *

 

[Later]

Laura flopped onto the bed face first, arms splayed out on either side as she released a frustrated groan into the morning air. Carmilla shut the door behind them and leaned up against the wall. She held the bandages in hand and, for a moment, preferred to simply watch her girlfriend. The complete stillness of her form was becoming less jarring by the day. It almost seemed normal now. Almost. The cuts and burns on Laura’s hands from their most recent misadventure on campus, while already healing, were staining their sheets with blood. Not that Carmilla could bring herself to care about yet another blood stain. The apartment had been covered, soaked, and splattered with blood for centuries. What were two more stains seemingly more harmless than most? However, Laura might care. Eventually. So Carmilla made an effort about something so trivial as blood stains.

Carmilla walked fully into the room and sat down next to her girlfriend. “I have bandages for your hands.”

“What’s the point,” came the muffled reply through the blankets.

“Well, you’re staining the bed for one,” Carmilla observed casually. 

“No, I’m not.” But Laura pulled her body up anyway, taking in the hand-sized red marks with a small frown. She sat on her knees, resting her hands pants, and turned her attention to the bandages in Carmilla’s hands. “Wow, you actually brought bandages.”

“Thought they might help.” Carmilla shrugged with a feigned nonchalance. “Here, give me your hand.”

Wordlessly, Laura extended her hands one by one to Carmilla who tenderly wrapped them in bandages. Focused on the task at hand, Carmilla savored the silence, the distraction. Laura watched, with surprise, the skill at which her girlfriend lovingly bandaged her hands. First aid was not a skill that readily came to mind when thinking about vampires, but one Carmilla clearly seemed familiar enough with. How many times had Carmilla done this before in the past centuries? And why? Did Laura even want to know?

“There.” Carmilla patted the top of Laura’s second hand with the quiet disappointment of a task complete.

Laura examined both hands for a second. The dressings seemed secured, neither too tight or too loose, comfortable and not at all restricting. 

“You can probably take them off in a few hours, good as new or whatever.”

“Except I’m not good as new.” Laura flopped backwards onto the bed and stared up at ceiling.

Carmilla bent down and stored the leftover bandages, for the time being, underneath the bed. “I guess that depends on your definition, cupcake.”

“Danny hates me now,” Laura groaned, her eyes fixed on a crack that cut partway across the ceiling.

“She doesn’t hate you.” Though, to Carmilla, it wouldn’t be that much of a bad thing if Danny did. She had never liked that gargantuan redhead with a savior complex. Good riddance and all that.

Laura shot Carmilla a look of disbelief.

“She’s just hurt or whatever. She’ll get over it or she won’t. And if she doesn’t, so what?” Carmilla sighed. “Look, for all we know, she probably still thinks I seduced you to the dark side with the promise of love and eternal youth. I’m the evil influence here, the sealer of cursed fates or what have you. If she hates anyone, she hates me and that’s nothing new by any definition.” Carmilla kicked the leftover bandages further under the bed with her heel. Her face spoke volumes missing in her otherwise distant tone. “You guys both blame me, so you have that in common at least. Use that to make up with gym shorts if you’re so torn up about her temper tantrum.” Despite attempts to keep her voice even, her words ended on a note of bitterness.

Carmilla moved to stand up, but Laura reached and grabbed her hand. It was with a resigned hesitation that Carmilla returned to the bed besides Laura.

“Carm…” Laura’s voice softened. “It’s not like that.”

Carmilla arched her eyebrow in a manner that might have seemed challenging if it wasn’t so defeated. “Oh really? You don’t blame me?”

Laura reached out a bandaged hand to stroke Carmilla’s cheek. Against all instincts, Carmilla remained stiff against the contact. When Laura crossed the distance between their bodies, Carmilla moved her head away to dodge the kiss.

“Carm?” Laura looked up, hurt and surprised.

Carmilla stood up from the bed before Laura could recover. She turned to face Laura, her arms crossed, and her face set. “I’m not some…” Carmilla bit her lip, fighting back the emotion coming to the forefront of her voice. Her eyes fell to the far side of the room, unable to look at Laura. “You can’t just kiss this away, Laura.”

“Carm. I’m not doing that!” Laura stood up and tried to reach out to her girlfriend. Carmilla took another step away, leaving Laura further taken aback. “Look, I’ve had a bad day. A bad semester. _I died._ A lot of stuff is going on and I just want to feel comforted right now. Is that so bad?”

“Is _this_ so bad?” Carmilla’s voice was hoarse.

“This?”

Carmilla’s hand moved from her chest to encompass the empty cups of blood, the room they had been occupying since returning to campus, and all of the world in a gesture. The unspoken, overly discussed yet always avoided _this_.

“It’s…” Struck silent, Laura mouth caught on the impossibility of knowing how to answer.

“Complicated, I know.” Carmilla shut her eyes, filling in the silence Laura couldn’t while trying to forcibly hold back the hot tears forming.

“Carm, I just… I just I need you to support me here. My entire world has turned upside down and I don’t know the centuries old vampire etiquette here. Do newly turned vampires usually write thank you notes? Are they normally happier? Do I have some vampire report card that says, ‘Is not transitioning well’? Because I’m not. I know I’m not, ok? I’m sorry that my struggling with this is so inconvenient for you.”

“It’s not _inconvenient_. That’s not what I’m saying.” Carmilla pressed the heel of her hand into her right eye, trying to physically push the tears back and the emotions down, trying to swallow the words she should never say out loud. “It’s hard, ok?”

“And you think I don’t know that?” Laura, unlike Carmilla, appeared to have no qualms about the tears forming in her eyes. “I didn’t ask for any of this so I need some time, ok?”

Carmilla bit her bottom lip. In a moment of bravery, her eyes lifted up to find Laura’s. Her hands trembled slightly. “What should I have done? What would you have wanted me to do?” The words tumbled out, barely a whisper. It was the question that had kept her up at night, that clung to the edges of her plaguing her thoughts at all hours. It wasn’t do you love me or do you forgive me. No. Those questions couldn’t even begin to exist without the answer to this question.

“Carm, I can’t… I can’t answer that.” Laura shook her head slowly, unsteadily.

Carmilla wilted as if part of her life had just been drained away, she nodded, averting her eyes to the floor.

As if to fill the space in the room no longer occupied by Carmilla’s diminished form, Laura threw her hands up as the tears streamed down her eyes. The bandage on her left hand, not as tightly wrapped as the other, unraveled slightly. “I don’t, I don’t know okay? It’s not one way or the other. All I know is that I didn’t ask for this.”

“You asked me to save you!” Carmilla shouted back, once again standing up straight before her voice softened to a painful plea. “You asked me to protect you, Laura. You wanted me to be a hero, to be _your_ hero. What did you think was going to happen when you died?”

“I wasn’t supposed to!” Laura shot back.

“But you did, Laura. You fell and you died. And all…” Carmilla crossed the distance between their bodies and, in an act of tender vulnerability, reached out and cupped Laura’s cheek. “And all I knew in that moment was that in over a century, you are the only person I’ve met who was ever worth saving. And so I did what you asked me to do, and yeah, I did what I wanted to because I love you. I tried to save you the only way I could.”

Laura pressed her lips together, trying to gain some composure as the tears ran down her cheeks, collecting in the crevices of Carmilla’s hand.

Carmilla’s voice was nearly a whisper. “Tell me. Should I have walked away, even after I promised? Is that what you wanted?”

“You know I can’t answer that.” Laura looked away, breaking contact and biting back everything that was crashing down. “Does it even matter? It’s too late.”

After several minutes of deafening silence, Carmilla nodded, averted her eyes, and withdrew her hand back to her side from where it was suspended in the air. Her words, when spoken, were fragile. “I understand.”

Shoulders slumped in defeat, she turned and walked out of the room, out into the hallway. She couldn’t go to the solarium; she didn’t want to be found. Worse, she was afraid of not being found, of the hours turning against her with the growing uncertainty that Laura might never come. And so she kept walking out the door, cutting a serpentine path across campus until she eventually found Mattie.

* * *

 

[Present Day]

For the past several hours, Carmilla had rested her head on Mattie’s lap as she drifted in and out of a shallow, painful sleep. Mattie’s attempt to help make Carmilla’s hazy world more comfortable by fashioning a lumpy pillow out of a hooded sweatshirt was met with only limited success as the zipper dug into her skull. However Carmilla had decided hours ago that this discomfort was preferable to the throbbing pain that blossomed outwards from her chest whenever she tried to move.

The sweatshirt was just one of many garments that Carmilla had stolen when she had first returned to campus which were now providing cold comfort in the darkness. A fair amount of what Carmilla had repurposed hadn’t fit the group in one way or another, which was bound to happen when her shopping technique involved mostly grabbing what looked half decent with minimal consideration of cut and size. She was used to only stealing for herself after all. Stealing for others added a new level of difficulty she had tried to compensate for in volume alone. Perhaps it was for the best in the end. This surplus of ill-fitting clothing was now being put to decent use by Mattie. A portion lay underneath their bodies, partly out of comfort but also, Carmilla suspected, in an effort to protect Mattie’s outfit from the dirt and debris of the tunnel. There seemed to be no other reason why an ill-fitting blazer, originally selected for LaFontaine, would be draped over Mattie’s shoulders.

The floorboards creaked above them. The steady footfalls of those still free to wander and move about the world echoed clearly in the darkness.

It would be still hours yet before they were allowed out of the tunnels for a temporary reprieve. By then, if the wannabe mad scientist had truly removed all of the arrowhead from her chest, Carmilla would hopefully be healed enough to walk around relatively pain free. It was a strange thing to look forward to, swapping the darkness of the tunnel for the night of the outside world. The tunnels were merely a cage within a cage and Carmilla felt none the safer from the world’s whims locked deeper inside than usual.

Carmilla suspected that even when she was healthier, no one would ever suggest exploring the passageways underneath their Mother’s house as a means to pass the time. It was with a resigned patience that the three vampires sat more or less directly underneath the tunnel’s entrance and waited. They were vampires, patience and filling the hours was almost second nature to them. However, unlike chill of tunnels, the accompanying boredom was more acutely felt.

Mattie had taken it upon herself to toss small pebbles in the general direction of JP. It was clear she wasn’t actually trying to hit him. For now, at least, she was entertained enough by how he flinched each and every time a pebble flew remotely near him. It was almost playfully systematic in how Mattie varied the proximity of stone’s flight to JP, determining just how far away the pebble could land and still garner an amusing reaction. JP had yet to protest or offer up a defense of any kind, which only seemed to entertain Mattie further. The new being who inhabited their little brother’s twice dead body was truly a fascinating creature in an albeit boring kind of way.

Mattie’s efforts paused momentarily as she strained to hear the muffled voices overhead. Annoyed at the strands of conversation that trickled through the sealed floorboards, she pelted a harder missile at the trap door in frustration. The rock bounced off the ceiling, narrowly missing JP’s head.

“That little wannabe idealist with her blood soaked fangs. I don’t know if I feel more jealous or betrayed by that changeling of yours, kitty cat.”

Carmilla cracked open an eye, but showed no interest in rising to her sister’s bait. It seemed like it’d require far more energy than she currently had at her disposal. If Mattie hadn’t wanted to kill Laura to avenge their Mother, Laura ousting Mattie from the Board and turning her into a fugitive trapped in Austria had at least moved her closer to Mattie’s actual kill list.

“I give the amateur surgeon another few days at best.” Mattie shook her head, carefully reaching out to find more pebbles while trying to be mindful of not disturbing Carmilla too greatly. “Your girlfriend’s obsessive need to play human is only going to backfire, darling, especially now that you’re not there to babysit.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. I don’t know what we are.” Carmilla closed her eyes again. Many of things had been done and said in Laura’s misguided yet successful mission to de-throne Mattie from the Board. Shortly after Danny had learned Laura’s secret, Laura had tried to persuade Carmilla into becoming the Student Representative on the Board. But Carmilla was too exhausted at playing a villain behind doors and a hero in front of the cameras and stormed out. She knew Laura only wanted Carmilla to prove that vampires could be good, that Laura could still be good despite now being one, but it was too much weight for Carmilla to bear on her own.

Carmilla hadn’t meant for it to be over, not really, but when she returned a day later only to find Danny, the new Student Representative, standing so close to Laura, the jealousy and resentment had washed away all the carefully thought out and practiced words back down her throat. When Vordenberg had outlawed vampires from campus, Carmilla had lost all taste for pretending to be a civilized and tame vampire for Laura’s sake. Not that she hadn’t been unsuccessfully trying to annoy Laura back into her arms since they broke up.

Only now, instead of rampaging a path of blood and ruin across campus, she was hiding out in a tunnel underneath her Mother’s apartment. It was embarrassing on multiple levels. Luckily, the Baron’s faux army was not skilled enough at supernatural warfare to know how to poison their arrow heads to actually kill vampires.

“I put my money on Xena selling everyone out, including Laura, to Baron von Lies first. She's always hated vampires.”

It wasn’t like there was a preferable option, not after Laura marked Mattie as pure evil without ever giving Carmilla’s sister a real chance. Laura had somehow decided that the Baron, with a trumped up vampire slaying pedigree, was the school’s only chance apparently just because he was human. As a newly turned vampire, the entire thought process was beyond confounding to Carmilla.

Except, that it wasn’t. Carmilla understood how much Laura wanted, strained, longed to still be human. How much she hated herself for being a vampire. And this self-disgust and misplaced guilt about Silas set off the whole damn chain of events.

Even now though, convalescing in the darkness of the tunnels underneath her Mother’s house, Carmilla found she couldn’t regret going on the short rampage. Or feel remotely guilty. She was a monster after all, wasn’t she? Centuries of sin and all that. This was who she was, at least, in part. She had missed it: the blood, the excitement, the screaming, the adrenaline. Rather, what she really missed was having Mattie by her side.

“Pathetic. The both of you.”

Carmilla could hear the judgement and dramatic eye roll in her sister’s voice, but decided against offering up her own defense. Mattie, after all, had a point. She usually did.

After another minute, the slight shifting in weight signaled that Mattie had returned to tossing small stone’s in JP’s general direction.

“Would you…. Would you mind terribly if you stopped?” JP broke his silence, perhaps equally protesting of the same circular conversation as he was with the stones. “Or perhaps if threw your stones in a slightly different direction, a direction I’m not currently in?”

Mattie unceremoniously dropped the rest of the rocks, her boredom now clearly coming through in her voice, “Then by all means, find another means of entertainment.”

“You were in the library for a short while.” Carmilla rolled her head slightly to look at him, ignoring the stabbing pain that shot straight through to her fingertips. “Got anything useful in that head of yours to help us pass the time?”

“Like a story? I do appear to have retained a near photographic memory.” JP brightened up at the prospect of being useful, once again bringing his hands together in that way that always reminded Carmilla of a squirrel.

“Excellent. A story. You’re already a marked improvement from our last brother.”

“Brother, does that mean we’re family now?” The innocent joy in his voice was annoying in its sweetness.

“Well, you are occupying our dead brother’s body so…” Carmilla scrunched her face. “Make yourself useful.”

Through the darkness, Carmilla watched JP’s momentary struggle to come up with something fitting before lifting a single finger up in victory and beginning in a tentative voice, “Once upon a time and a very good it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo.”

“I can’t believe I left Morocco for this,” Mattie groaned, leaning her head back against the tunnel wall.

“I could recite something else if James Joyce is not to your liking?”

* * *

 

[Earlier]

“Did you ever think that maybe you’re not actually looking up at the stars?” Laura broke the silence that had enveloped the solarium. She leaned her head on Carmilla’s shoulder, who had been contently looking up at the stars until that moment. Or apparently not looking up at the stars, according to Laura. Carmilla arched her eyebrow up in response, not complaining when Laura nestled further into her and placed her hand on her knee.

“What exactly am I looking at then, cupcake? The lost souls of the innocent or the gods that look down on us and mark us as fools while laughing at our silly tragedies?” 

The two had been in the solarium for hours, trying to give space for LaFontaine, Perry, and JP to work out a peace accord now that JP had gained corporeal form. Their mugs of blood were long emptied and the rest of the house had quieted down over an hour ago but still the two had lingered.

“It’s not looking at, but looking _up_ at,” Laura clarified. “If you think about it, I mean, you could actually be looking down at the stars.” When Carmilla’s eyebrow seemed to arch even higher with incredulousness, Laura continued on to her point. “The earth is a sphere.”

“A fact I’ve been aware of. It has been round for quite some time now.”

“Well, then it’s just as likely that you’re looking down at the stars than you are looking up at them. It’s a matter of perspective.” Laura beamed with a slight spark of mischief.

Carmilla simply closed her eyes for a moment before turning to examine the other woman in disbelief.

“Well, think about it. You’re looking up at your feet and down at the infinite cosmic abyss.” Laura continued to grin quite proudly.

“You’re utterly ridiculous.” Carmilla closed her eyes, unamused.

“Just for a minute, I’m serious, think about it.” Laura seemed undeterred as she extended her hand, casting a shadow across the solarium floor. “The universe is insane. Seriously, light travels over how many millions upon millions of miles only to be stopped mere inches away from landing on the ground by my hand.”

“It’s 3am, cupcake. The only light particles you’re obstructing are from the halogen light up there. I don’t think they ever had any such lofty goals as space exploration.”

“But, like, in the daylight,” Laura pouted as Carmilla stubbornly refused to play along.

Carmilla only shrugged slightly in response.

“Don’t you find it sad or interesting or fascinating at all? On any level here? You’re supposed to be a philosophy major, all dark and broody. Contemplating the stars and the universe, this is right up your alley. You do it all the time. Come on!” Laura made one last final attempt to get her girlfriend to join in.

Carmilla let out the unnecessary oxygen that had been collecting in her lungs. She was supposed to be a lot of things: the brave and selfless hero who had saved Silas, the weak and selfish monster who had turned Laura into a vampire, a bloodthirsty demon with a heart of gold. From one moment to the next, she couldn’t remember if she was supposed to have a soul or not, if she was vile to the irredeemable core or if she bore the pale mark of redemption if held up to the right light. It changed with such speed and with so little warning that she increasingly found herself with whiplash. Her teeth were stained with blood, her mind was rattled with philosophy to ease the malaise of longevity, and she had a sarcastic sense of humor to compensate for centuries of haunting memories. She was supposed to be a lot of things, but when she thought about Laura’s question, she had a hard time contemplating the plight of the light particle. Carmilla doubted that if she held it up, or down, to the light and examined it closely, she would ever find it sad like Laura wanted her to. Even fleetingly, she wouldn’t know how.

“Okay,” Carmilla tried to humor Laura, “so the light travels all the way from the sun, throughout the cold and lonely universe, only to find your hand instead of, what? The dirt or some bit of dying grass? What’s to say that, in the end, your hand isn’t preferable? It isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Laura, veering off course and ending up somewhere different and unexpected.”

* * *

 

[Even Earlier]

Carmilla’s slowly growing sense of confidence fell away as she finally recognized the futility that lay before her. It had seemed to be going so well. Several moves back she had even captured her Mother’s queen, and before that, she had laid waste to a bishop, a knight, both her Mother’s rooks, and a handful of pawns. She had thought that, for once in all her centuries of existence, she was moving in for the kill. Instead, only too late, she now saw the intricate spider web for what it was. Every captured piece was a savage sacrifice designed to lead Carmilla into the trap so artfully laid before her by her Mother.

It took only three more moves before Carmilla’s king was ceremoniously rolling on its side across the board. Carmilla had never stood a chance.

“You’re improving, meine kaiserin.” Affection tinged Mother’s words and victory painted Her face.

Carmilla barely looked up from the board, still examining it closely with a thoughtful frown as she tried to determine just where it had gone wrong and when her Mother had taken control. Was it from the beginning, had Carmilla been losing from the start, or had her Mother simply known how to redeem and twist the early losses into victory?

“Don’t sulk after I pay you a compliment. It’s unbecoming, especially when you know that you will never win,” Mother scolded lightly, tapping Carmilla almost playfully on her on nose. With the light admonishment, Carmilla’s Mother stood up to once again examine the map and various papers laid out on the nearby table.

The door opened, letting in a gust of winter air, as Carmilla started to return the pieces to the small bag where they were kept in between games. The carved stone was cold to her touch. Her finger toyed with one of her Mother’s fallen pawns, feeling a strange sense of camaraderie and connection with the piece. She wondered if her Mother would ever use her in such a brutally heartless and strategic fashion, but she did not let her mind wander too far down that direction. She was her Mother’s kaiserin, her glittering girl. Her favorite.

In the doorway, Mattie knocked the snow off her shoulders with a deeply set frown. She never enjoyed being brought to the colder climate of Styria every twenty years. Their eyes locked and, with a guilty conscience, Carmilla instantly covered the pawn up in her fist. Carmilla tipped her head slightly in greeting, afraid Mattie had somehow intuited her thoughts, her momentary doubts and fears about their Mother.

“Chess, still? Does it not bore you to win every time?” Mattie shook her head, hanging her cloak up and walking fully into the room. For as long as Carmilla had been alive, Mattie had refused to play either Mother or Carmilla in a game. In the space in between both their words about the matter, Carmilla had gathered that this had not always been the case. Carmilla also sensed that it was best not to ask why it had changed. It seemed like there was more to it than Mattie simply growing tired of never winning.

“Mircalla and I enjoy our little games, don’t we darling?” Mother remarked airily, pausing only to register Carmilla’s consenting nod, before walking out of the room leaving the two sisters alone.

Carmilla quickly poured the rest of the pieces in their velvet bag as Mattie walked over as if to hide the evidence of her brief betrayal.

“And how is my little monster?” Mattie smiled warmly, kissing Carmilla on the forehead. Carmilla dipped her head shyly in a failed attempt to hide the slight blush playing across her cheeks. “Playing chess pointlessly with Maman and ruining your mind with those philosophy books as always, I suppose? How dreary. When this is over, I am going to see if Mother will let you out to play. I’ve an itch to see Saigon.”

* * *

 

 [Later]

The world had become such loud and overwhelming place. How did one become accustom to such a near constant buzzing din, always just out of reach of becoming an ignorable white noise. Days since returning to the surface and finding herself among the world, and Carmilla still couldn’t handle the noise and the light. Brighter than the fires of hell in her dreams, not even disappearing with the sun. This was not the world she had longed for and missed or had pulled apart and reassembled in her mind for decades. It was if the world had become possessed.

Oh how the electricity flickered and buzzed and followed her no matter where she wandered. It mystified her how the wires, these strange pieces of modern string and rope, could carry the brightness of the stars and voices of strangers across a country. It seemed as if these wires, these radio signals could carry anything if anyone only knew how to receive the right signal.

Returning to the world, in ragged clothes stolen from the front and buzzing from the fresh blood of the fallen soldiers, she had walked all day until she came to the first town. And then she had walked straight through into the following morning until she could felt as if she could walk no further. She had walked past couples, friends, families, wartime volunteers, and lovers for days until she realized that all the decorations in the windows meant that it was Christmas. She had tried to pull from the air that feeling of happiness, that feeling of safety, of warmth and love so inherent to the holiday. As if through the hum in the air alone, she could finally remember and receive that lost sensation of the Christmas spirit. But she hadn’t the wires. She hadn’t the connection.

Being around other people only made her feel half feral. Centuries since her death and she was more wild creature set upon the earth than a former countess.

It was too dangerous to contact Mattie. As she stood up and walked through to her fifth sunrise in this new century, it was almost enough to simply live in the same world as her sister. There was no else left for her in this strange modern existence, only the idea, the concept of Mattie out there somewhere.

Later, as she was better acclimated to world of words and lights and people, she hid out in a small flat in Paris, squatting in a hovel and constantly looking over her shoulder. Sometimes the parties of the neighbors above her, poor but happy, were so loud that her whole apartment seemed to tremble from the jarring joie de vivre. The pictures the previous occupant had so lovingly hung on the wall, one by one, fell to the floor over the course of several months. The shattered glass, never cleaned or swept away, became a sporadic and ever growing glistening carpet in the dimly lit room. How the loud clamor of mirth granted her sleepless night after sleepless night, a welcome reprieve from the nightmares that had begun to poke and tear at her sanity with a renewed vigor.

Carmilla never turned on a light in that flat, not once. She had thought that the static of this modern era would engulf her. That she would drown in it and feared it more than the coffin. She sought out and avoided crowded cafes in equal, frantic measures as she was unable to be alone and unable to be in crowds any longer.

But then Mother found her and Mattie returned to her life. No longer a talisman or a patron saint, Mattie held her, telling her little monster that she had missed her as if no significant time had past. Only then did Carmilla begin to feel less feral, less apart from the rest of world. Only then did the violent buzzing soften to calming hum. Only then did Carmilla’s rough edges begin to be soothed out of sight and mostly out of mind.

* * *

 

[Present Day]

Even at their closest, most affectionate, and passionate stages of their friendship, Mattie was never one to rest her head on Carmilla’s lap. It was almost always Carmilla who would sprawl out and lie languidly across Mattie as her sister looked down dotingly, teasingly, with hints of affectionate judgement and sibling rivalry. However three hundred years of friendship was too long a time for always and nevers. Exceptions to the rule were common enough that Mattie was a familiar weight in Carmilla’s arm.

But now the nuances to Mattie’s body were all wrong. Even when Mattie had been asleep or drunk on too much wine and blood, she had never felt like this. Mattie lay both limp and stiff in Carmilla’s arms, somehow managing to be both too heavy and far too light. Her heart lay crushed on the floor before her, its mechanisms ground into the carpet.

Throughout the centuries, Carmilla’s opinion and belief in souls had shifted several times over before settling on simply accepting the existence of souls as one of the universe’s more duller mysteries. The philosophy was admittedly fascinating on some levels, but as a vampire, it was hard for Carmilla to determine why she cared. She watched the debate circle around on itself as a distant, lackluster observer.

She had felt, truly felt, all these centuries. She accepted the weight, the heft of her emotions, at times even feeling them as almost physical beings dwelling inside her. But was this weight proof that a soul existed? Was this new, heavy lightness in Mattie’s body a sign that her sister, her closest friend was truly dead, and that her soul had finally, officially departed her body? 

Dead a second time around, there was nothing she could do to bring Mattie back. Mattie was gone. Not since the bloody coffin, not since the years directly after had Carmilla felt this utterly alone and abandoned.

Three hundred years of friendship. Three hundred years. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t find the right words. She never would. The profoundness of loss defied every language she had ever known. Dates, times, and experiences sounded like irrelevant rattlings from a history book that missed all the important points. They would never even scratch the surface of the depths of a moments, the intricacies in a look, the hidden worlds in Mattie’s laugh, or how even at her most unpredictable pragmatism, Mattie always made Carmilla feel safe, like everything was going to be okay. An entire world, centuries lived under Mother’s control, and the only thing Carmilla had to be proud of in all that time and had never truly ruined was her friendship with Mattie.

Until now. Until maybe Laura.

Perhaps even with Laura.

“All those memories. All that life to end like this. For what? For you?” Carmilla loosened her grip on the familiar softness of Laura’s hair and stepped back. She was unable to look at or touch the girl whose death only months before she grieved so thoroughly as to disrupt the natural order. What had she done on the mountain? If she had known then that she was choosing between Mattie and Laura, would she have done any of it differently?

If she was honest with herself, she knew that even now, with Mattie’s lifeless body strewn across the floor, she doubted she could have. The shame burned deep underneath the grief, only fueling her pain and agony further.

“Carm, please—“

“Be good for me, Carmilla. Change for me, Carmilla. Burn down everything you’ve ever loved for me, Carmilla.” Carmilla felt her Mother’s chiding that stone could never love flesh and Mattie’s unsure appraisal of Laura. The cold wind from the mountain rushed through Carmilla’s skull as Mattie’s judgements, her admonishments, her concerns about Laura reverberated through her. She felt the suffocating trappings of being the hero tighten around the equally restricting bonds of being a villain. She felt every role Laura demanded her to play violently tear her apart, but it was Mattie who lay dead on the floor.

“That’s not fair. I didn’t ask you for any of this.” They both knew what Laura meant. She had never asked to be a vampire, she never asked to be saved _in that way_. But they both knew that Laura had asked for so many other things before and then even more after that, too scared and ashamed of what she had become. Laura needed to someone to blame, to accuse, to physically lift up and hold that shame and yet distract her from it as well. And for a while Carmilla had said yes, had knowingly consented to all of it.

They both knew what Laura said was absolute lies and the complete truth. And Carmilla didn’t have the strength, the energy for such complexities, not anymore, not after everything else.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME.” Her voice, her scream, even with all the pain she felt, was softer than her Mother’s, softer than Mattie’s. In her fourth century, she was still a child, still a fool. “The next one of you who comes near me I swear to God, _I will kill._ ”

* * *

 

In the days that followed, she held so many dead bodies of her own making in her arms. Summers, Zetas, deranged and violent town folk, humans closer to childhood than maturity, it hardly mattered. She barely felt their lives leaving their bodies, barely registered them at all before she let their bodies fall back down to the earth.

Carmilla wasn’t fool enough to believe this would soothe her. No amount of killing would wash away the weight of her sister’s body in her arms, of Mattie’s death in her heart. If given the opportunity, even Danny and Vordenberg’s deaths would be shallow and fleeting satisfactions at best. The very definition of hollow. The loss, the death of Mattie would be forever woven into her existence. She would be haunted by the first snowfall without Mattie cursing the heavy flakes and the last time she remembered Mattie laughing. Over time the laugh would become blurry, garbled by others until all that remained was a memory of a memory of a memory attached to a pain deeply settled within her bone structure.

When the blood had begun to dry and the veil of red began to recede from her eyes, when the Zetas had chopped down the trees robbing her of any chance of sleep, when she had found herself trapped in the lost library, all Carmilla could feel was the weight of Mattie in her arms. Carmilla curled up against the wall and let the static of the world wash over her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "You will always be a monster - there is no turning back from it. But what kind of monster you become is entirely up to you."  
> —   
> Julie Kagawa, The Eternity Cure

Laura felt the weight of her guilt perched brutally upon her shoulder. It was if she almost physically had to crane her neck around the twin birds of her penitence and shame as she checked one last time to make sure she was alone. It was unnecessary. She knew LaFontaine and JP were upstairs animatedly comparing the physics of trebuchets and catapults. Danny was showering the latest assault from Vordenberg’s army out of her hair, bound to be a slow process as the injuries she’d sustained from Mattie were now compounded by battle. And Perry? Laura could only assume that she was once again tucked away in the library pouring over the Dean’s books with an impressive dedication.

Still, Laura’s eyes flickered nervously about, seeking the reassurance of an empty room. Finally satisfied, she lifted the trap door open and jumped down into the tunnel below without any further hesitation.

Her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness of the empty tunnel. With a frown, she noted the clear signs of its recent occupants: piles of clothes that seemed to create makeshift cushions and beds, a small mound of pebbles, discarded and empty blood bags, and even a few candles that had been burned down to the wick. From where she was standing, Laura could see candle wax drippings scattered across the earth near a book that had been left open. Laura could picture the scene so clearly: Carmilla absentmindedly playing with the candle while reading. Laura’s stomach sank.

The room felt damp with boredom. Carmilla’s scent called to Laura in a fervent yet ghostly whisper. Like a well-worn mantra, she wondered once again where it had all gone wrong without actually wanting to know the answer.

Crouching down, Laura picked up the opened book. While it was nowhere near as ancient as the Sumerian tome from the previous semester, this book was clearly old. Though, like most books in the Dean’s collection, it seemed as if little consideration had been given to its potential status as a valuable historical artifact. She wondered if the book was older or younger than her ex-girlfriend. The cloth binding was beyond broken and fraying in more places than not. It was yet another object affected by time in a way Laura never would be. 

While Carmilla had a higher respect for books than she did most things, she still had the habit of leaving them strewn around, left open to whatever page she had last been reading. This book featured the all too common blood splatters across the page which Laura had only half-convinced herself were from centuries of her ex-girlfriend’s carelessness.

The book, the last Carmilla had been reading before Mattie’s death, had a visceral effect in Laura’s hands. More than the blood stains, it created the illusion that Carmilla would be coming back momentarily. But gone where the days of Carmilla appearing in doorways with a cup of blood in each hand. Laura briefly allowed herself to indulge in memories of the solarium. It wasn’t that she was happier then. It wasn’t that the world made any better sense or that she had felt any semblance of inner peace, because none of that was true. But she had felt less alone then. She had felt loved, if not always entirely understood.

Either for distraction or to feel closer to Carmilla even for a second, Laura tried to read Carmilla’s book. It was in French and mostly beyond Laura’s rudimentary understanding. Her eyes, however, caught and snagged on a line appearing partway down the page. If she was translating correctly, which was a sizable if, it seemed to say: _Remembering is only a new type of suffering_.*

Laura dropped the book, the binding slipping unaffectionately through her fingers before disturbing a small cloud of dust as it landed with a soft thud. Slowly she stood up and backed away before quickly scrambling out of the tunnel and slamming the trapdoor shut behind her with an unexplainable urgency.

She hadn’t known what she expected down there, perhaps some sense of lingering comfort or connectedness, but it wasn’t that. Whatever that was, it wasn’t that at all.

Perry stood in the doorway, eyebrow raised in either suspicion or concern. It had become so hard to read Perry recently. They had all seemed to shift and change so much over the semester, Perry most of all.

“Everything all right, Laura?”

“Yeah… yeah, of course.” Laura waved the question away shakily. “I was looking for one of my sweaters. I thought Carmilla might have taken it.”

Perry regarded Laura carefully for a moment, as if not quite fully believing the excuse before finally nodding.

Laura still felt the book burning her hands under Perry’s watchful gaze. She tried to rub it off against the sides of her pants, but the heat of the friction did little to alleviate the sensation and she soon stopped.

“Anyway, I should…” Laura gestured towards the kitchen with a slight tip of her chin. In truth, there was nothing she should do. The blood, the food, the energy they should expend in between attacks, all of it was being rationed. There was no homework to do, no idle way to pass the time, no chance at a peaceful night sleep or even a refreshing nap. Maybe Perry was right with all her reading. At least it was a productive way to pass the unsteady time between the sieges.

“Laura, we need to talk.” Perry crossed her arms, her tone firm.

“Ok, Perry, what’s up?” Laura tried to keep her tone casual, nonchalant despite the fact that nothing about Perry in that moment seemed to foreshadow a happy, carefree conversation.

Perry lowered herself down on one of the chairs almost regally. Laura say down on the daybed, folding her hands across lap and already feeling every bit like a scolded child.

“I’ve been doing some reading. A lot of the books here are…” Perry stopped herself, seeming to decide against saying whatever adjective that had initially come to mind. “Anyway. They’ve been very informative. Did you know that there is more than one way to turn someone into a vampire?”

“No, no, I didn’t,” Laura confessed, feeling suddenly woefully unprepared. Ignorant, even. She used to date a vampire, hell, she was a vampire now. What she knew about them was remarkably and embarrassingly minimal considering. She had been so obsessively caught up in playing human girl since returning to campus that she had barely asked any questions, hadn’t looked for any answers, or even listened when Carmilla tried to offer them anyway. The powers that she had as a vampire? Beyond the strength, the speed, and the fangs? She wasn’t even entirely sure she even knew what they all were let alone how to use them.

“From what I can tell, the way Carmilla turned you seems to be the most common. It requires little to no magical aptitude, which makes sense. I doubt she would have ever put the time and effort into mastering witchcraft. She is rather tragically lazy after all.” Perry pursed her lips, in a way almost challenging Laura to disagree. Laura, however, did not rise to defend Carmilla. Instead, she found herself focusing on Perry’s words. Her speech was still as staccato as always, catching and finding its own nervous energy and rhythm, but it seemed different somehow and that made Laura sad. It was only in the quieter moments like this that Laura could see glimpses of how the school year had taken its toll on everyone. People were jumpier, less likely to sleep through the whole night, that much was obvious. But they also spoke differently and held their bodies in new ways to accommodate all the stress and trauma Laura has caused them through the chain reactions of her poor decisions. How changed they all were, almost beyond recognition from where they started _._

“It does, however, require a sacrifice.” Perry continued. “A blood price, I think it’s called.” 

Laura bit her lip and closed her eyes, her clear lack of curiosity and overall muted response silently confirmed the truth of Perry’s statement.

“LaFontaine.”

There seemed no point in denying Perry’s deduction. With the slightest of gestures, unable to open her eyes to look at her friend, Laura confirmed the painful truth.

“They don’t know. I haven’t told them and they’ve been so taken with their seemingly miraculous ability to bring the dead back to life I doubt they’ve figured it out,” Perry spoke with the harshly affectionate edge of judgement. “I’d like to keep it that way. God knows LaFontaine would probably just end up killing themselves by running all sorts of experiments trying to figure the whole damn thing out.”

At this, the relief was visible, though tension was still clearly evident in the way Laura held her shoulders, the way her fingernails dug into her own fists.

“The problem is we’re almost out of blood. Even with rationing, between you and JP both… if anything were to, either out of your own hunger or their curiosity… Do you understood?”

Laura’s eyes landed on the trap door where she had just emerged. It seemed almost fitting after everything to live in the tunnel with whispers of Carmilla and the scent of Mattie’s ghost. “I understand.”

“No, Laura.” Perry got up and sat besides her on the day bed, a show of confidence. Of trust. “Considering everything going on out there, a secret vampire has it’s advantages. It wouldn’t do us any good to have you locked away underground when we need your help. We just have to take precautions, that’s all.”

“Wait, what?” Suddenly Laura didn’t understand as much as she thought she did. All she knew was that Perry’s words had shone a bright, unflattering light on the dirtiness she already felt and now she was reeling to keep up.

Perry smiled slightly, the promise of a solution in the corner of her lips. “You know what there is a lot of in this apartment, besides books?”

Again, Laura shook her head. There was pain, misery, mistakes, mysterious blood stains that never needed to be explained as far as Laura was concerned, and enough stupid decisions to drown a small army. Regret and shame, that’s all Laura saw.

Perry stood up and left the room only to return a moment later with a set of chains. “They’re everywhere. The challenge was finding ones that still had keys.”

Laura’s face dropped, but she stood up and held out her hands with docile resignation. This is who she was now.

“It’s only until we can get more blood,” Perry’s voice softened. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Laura, we just have to be safe.”

“I told you, I understand,” Laura’s tone was muted, her eyes locked on what would soon become her newest accessory.

With that, Perry deftly fit the leather strap around Laura’s neck before securing the shackles on her wrists. Satisfied that the chains were well and truly locked, Perry dropped the key safely into her pocket. Laura shook her wrists, rattling the chains slightly, and felt the corresponding light tug on her neck from the collar. She noted with a grim satisfaction that these would most likely hold her. In the back of her mind, she was already forming ways she could still get at LaFontaine. It’d be harder now, sure, but probably not impossible. More inconvenient than anything else. Some part of Laura realized that Perry also knew this.

“We’ll take these off for your videos and when the old man’s army attacks next. No one will ever have to know your secret,” Perry promised. “But no one will get harmed by it either, unless they’re, you know, on the wrong side.”

Laura wasn’t even sure she knew who or what was the wrong side anymore. She had thought she was good, but she had been a fool only making bigger and bigger mistakes along the way. It was her fault that the angler fish god had almost escaped. The power vacuum and subsequent petty warlord days of the student factions that followed in the Dean’s wake? Her fault. All the changes Vordenberg had instituted? Again, her fault. The murder of the newspaper kids, the Summers, and Mattie? Carmilla’s subsequent rampage? Without a question, her fault.

“I told you, it’s a good idea.” Laura nodded stiffly, her eyes still locked on the metal encapsulating her wrists. “I’m glad you thought of it.”

Laura wondered how she’d tie her shoelaces or scratch the tip of her nose. She wondered if this is how Carmilla felt for the nine days that she had been trussed up in their dorm room last semester. She wondered where Carmilla was now, what she was doing, and if she was thinking about Laura, if she was missing her at all. Maybe Carmilla was simply relieved to be finally free.

* * *

 

[Earlier]

“I’m Laura first. At least, I hope I still am.” Tears streamed down Laura’s face as she pleaded. In the uncomfortable anticipation of a reply, she suddenly realized she wasn’t even sure she wanted to be Laura anymore.

Laura had stopped wiping her bloody hands across her jeans. The friction had only worsened the holy water burns. The burns, she imagined, would heal slower than the initial wounds. She wasn’t sure if her relationship with Danny would ever heal. She nervously eyed the small, dangerously charged space between Danny and Carmilla.

“How can I trust a word you’ve said? All this time you’ve been lying to me.” Danny’s face struggled and contorted with the pain and confusion of betrayal. “Why didn’t you tell me? You just… you just _lied_. The whole time.”

Laura opened her mouth to speak but found only silence caught in her throat.

“And you, Xena, you think you’re any better?”

In the distance, LaFontaine shifted uncomfortably and muttered something about mushroom samples. Perry had always been the one to know when to delicately guide them out of the room. Without Perry, a horrified LaFontaine now sat too transfixed to walk away.

“Do you know what one of the cruelest creatures is?” Carmilla continued, her voice trembling with rage. “Children like you, with your _ideals_ and your _morals._ You watched a Disney movie and now what, if you just try your very best and remain pure of heart, you’ll magically fix everything and get your fairy tale happy ending? Grow up. Do you even know how fairy tales end? Newsflash gym shorts: they end horribly for everyone involved.”

Danny’s eyes fluttered to the ground, crestfallen in youthful foolishness, before rising boldly to meet Carmilla’s glare. “I refuse to believe that-…”

“You refuse? _You refuse?_ How utterly quaint.” Carmilla’s lips curled in judgmental disgust. “The world doesn’t care for your consent or your refusal. You’re just a scared little girl playing make believe white knight. Your petty sense of flawed justice is just some cheap ribbon decorating your cruelty.” Carmilla reached across the distance. With a swift, easy motion, Carmilla shoved the taller woman up against a nearby tree. Holding Danny firmly in place with her forearm but without any expressed intent in actually hurting her, Carmilla seemed to be trying to convince Danny from proximity alone. “This isn’t some game of what ifs and make believe.”

“Carm,” Laura’s nearly whispered protest lacked conviction. She was oddly captivated in how the two women were looking at each other. It wasn’t quite hostile, but determined with jaws clenched.

“Don’t pretend you wouldn’t have been the first to demand her resurrection,” Carmilla scoffed. “Don’t claim you would have wanted a shallow grave for her in the frozen earth on some unidentified mountain. Would you have really preferred to turn her death into some faux-noble cause to rally your petty ideals around?” Carmilla’s eyes narrowed, her anger rising in cold, controlled, and bitter sentences. “You’re a child. Do you even know what it is to grieve? To have your life defined by firsts without her, then seconds, and thirds until it’s all so worn away you can’t even remember her face? Don’t you get it, loss is a life sentence.”

“Carm! Carm that’s enough!” Laura shouted, desperate for Carmilla to stop talking more than anything else. She couldn’t hear this.

Carmilla instantly took a step back and let Danny drop to the ground.

Danny, desperately gulping for air from where she leaned up against the tree, looked up at Carmilla with a look of fear and anger, and even if Laura didn’t see it, with a strange and unspoken understanding.

Carmilla crouched down before Danny. “You and I both know we’d sell our souls to keep Laura alive. It's useless to pretend otherwise.” She tipped her head to side, as if trying to gauge Danny’s understanding. “Laura was dead. Now she’s alive. Be thankful.” Satisfied, she stood up. “You’re a _scared, little girl_ , Danny Lawrence. If you’re not careful, it’s all you’ll ever be.”

Carmilla held out her hand to help Danny back up. With reluctance, Danny reached up and accepted the offered help.

* * *

 

[Later]

It was the lull after the latest wave of attacks. The strange silence left behind by the retreating horde was filled with the distant snarls that made their way through the fortified walls of the apartment. Laura had tried to watch Vordenberg’s horde attempt to drive back Carmilla, in full cat form, from the crater. The effort had finally inched out of view and Laura sat on the daybed, deflated.

She could hear LaFontaine and Perry preparing rations in the kitchen. As the days dragged, the portions diminished. Laura’s stomach no longer growled, but she felt a familiar trembling returning to her hands.

Laura didn’t look up at the rattling of chains as JP sat down on the daybed beside her.

Perhaps it was out of sheer exhaustion and starvation or from living in a world that far too closely resembled the war novels that always rested on her father’s night stand. Perhaps they had simply hit a breaking point, but Laura shook her chains back in a delayed greeting. JP rattled his back. Now looking up at JP, Laura instantly replied by jangling hers. In that moment, there was an almost childlike, simplistic joy in the noise their chains made and it became a kind of a game. JP took simple rhythm and made his own before Laura would pick up it, modifying it again, and passing it back. In the unsteady percussion, Laura felt less alone. For the first time in days, she smiled. JP smiled back.

“Is everything okay in here?” LaFontaine dashed in, fear drenching their features, white knuckles clenching a stake.The reality of the situation all too quickly hit Laura with a deluge of cold disappointment.

“Yeah. Fine.” Laura stilled her hands, her face instantly shifting back to its blank expression as she refused to meet LaFontaine’s eyes.

“Then are we quite done?” Perry stuck her head around the corner. “One of the first moments of silence we’ve had in days…”

Laura and JP nodded sullenly.

Perry smiled curtly before disappearing back in the direction of the kitchen.

“Are you sure everything’s okay?” LaFontaine regarded them slowly as they lowered the stake, clearly ashamed.

“Sure.” Laura replied with a dismissive tone, her eyes not leaving the weapon in her friend’s hand.

LaFontaine’s eyes flashed to JP, who seemed to offer kinder assurances, before they went back to the kitchen.

“Do your chains ever pinch around the wrists?” JP broke the tense silence between them. “The hinge and clasp seems to pull awfully on the arm hair, do they not?”

Laura nodded before adding, “Does your neck strap chafe?”

“Oh yes, truly, like something dreadful, Miss Hollis,” JP winced in empathy, tipping his head slightly to the side to show the growing redness on his neck.

It was these rare moments, just the two of them, that made Laura wished they talked sooner. Or more often. This thought made her grow bolder.

“JP, do you like being a vampire?”

“I don’t quite know.” JP answered after a moment of careful reflection. “I’ve been so long without a body that the whole matter still confuses me greatly. It’s just perfectly odd, when you think about it. All these sensations, and you know what they all mean?” He spoke with a burst of wonder, like a small child awestruck and a little overwhelmed.

“To be honest I still guess most of the time, especially now…” Laura shook her head. How often, even before becoming a vampire, had her own body confused her and eluded any discernible sense of rhyme or reason?

“I lived within a card catalogue when it was handwritten. It was an unattractive existence, I assure you. But now I am dumbfounded by what to you seems so simple and yet… How is one supposed to discern if they’re hungry, exhausted, or feeling an emotion? And hugging, I’m not sure I entirely understand why it is considered a useful form of communication. It seems so entirely odd to press one’s body against another, don’t you think?” JP looked at Laura, searching for corroboration.

However, Laura could not agree and instead offered that, “Maybe it’s something you get used to after a while.”

“Possibly. I admit that it is somewhat reassuring to know that my current vessel will likely not wear out any time soon, though to live on the physical plane, in the broadest sense, I’m not entirely sure what that means.” And then, as if finding his conclusion in the air, he lifted his finger to point it out, raising his hands to the limit of his chains in emphasis. “It was simpler, yes, in the card catalogue, but I imagine that is only because I had gotten used to it. I am overbrimming with gratitude that LaFontaine saved me. Please do not mistake that. It is only an adjustment, I dare say I will make it in time.”

Laura nodded silently, feeling more alone now that JP had answered her question. Her situation felt so different from his, she had to navigate the loss and retention of her humanness. And he? He hadn’t been human, strictly speaking, for centuries already. LaFontaine had saved JP after the library. And Carmilla had… what exactly on the mountain?

Maybe they weren’t so different after all.

“Do you like it, being a vampire?” JP finally broke the silence, as if remembering his forgotten line.

“I…” Laura bit her lip. Did she? She liked being alive in that, as far as she knew, she preferred it to being dead. Did she like it more than being a human, though? Her body had been so weak, so frail before. And blood, she loved the taste in a way that she had never loved the taste of anything while human. If given the opportunity, she wasn’t sure if she would go back. Not that she would ever be given the opportunity. Not that it meant that she liked being a vampire. She simply liked being.

Laura was saved from having to string a coherent answer together as Perry and LaFontaine returned, each holding a cup with a straw.

* * *

 

[Later]

It had only taken Laura a matter of seconds to capture the townsman who had managed to break past their barricade. He had made it far too easy once he darted around the corner past sight lines and Laura no longer had to worry about pretending to be human. It felt exhilarating overtaking him, a man almost twice her size. It felt right, the way his face instantly devolved into fear when she had effortlessly pinned his struggling body up against the wall.

Her entire body was on the edge of anticipation as she grinned lazily, predatorily exposing her fangs for him to see. The air was thick with this man’s fear, intermingling with the pungent smell of his sweat and stale cigarettes. He polluted the air around him with tractor oil, cheap soap, and a shampoo that smelled surprisingly fruity. And soon the scent of his blood would fill the air.

With her free hand, she instinctually maneuvered his neck into a position mirroring the one Carmilla had demonstrated all those weeks ago in the kitchen. The man trembled in her grip and on the outside, Laura felt no guilt. She could practically feel the blood trapped within his thin, sinewy body calling out to her, begging her to free it from this man’s claustrophobic veins.

And yet, Laura paused. She stopped barely a centimeter away from puncturing his skin. Pulling away, she carefully examined his freckled face. She observed how his eyes were shoved so tightly closed that the skin wrinkled and obscured his thin eye lashes, how his whole body was already cringing in anticipation.

She could smell death upon him. She could feel the need, the emptiness thrashing inside her and there was nothing she wanted more in that moment.

With a hard shove, she sent him to the ground where he lay motionless, stunned.

It was his shampoo. What pitchfork happy grown man used fruity shampoo? Was it his wife’s, his daughter’s? Maybe he lived with his sister and never remembered to buy his own. All Laura could think of was how similar it smelled to that nurse who had driven them back from the hospital. Was this her husband? Unlikely. It didn’t matter. This man might deserve to die, but did his family deserve to grieve him?

Both deeply disappointed in herself and proud, she turned to rejoin the others but didn’t make it far before she felt her entire head and neck vibrate with a sharp, surging pain. Stumbling forward a few steps, somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that had she still been human, that was likely a fatal blow. She whipped around, the blinding pain already receding to a stinging annoyance. The man was panting heavily with a wild look of desperation as he gripped a plank of wood as if his life depended on it. Which, Laura realized, was true.

“That was incredibly stupid,” she growled, berating more herself than him. It took little effort to pluck the wood from his grasp, where she shattered it over her knee before tossing the pieces far away from them.

The man held his fists up, looking at her with a fearful, foolish defiance. Was this what she had looked like to Will, a deluded fool wasting both their time?

“I let you live.” She was exasperated. “Walk away while you still can.”

“Vampire scum.” He spat in the general direction towards her feet.

“Ungrateful, pitchfork happy idiot.”

A quick blow to the head rendered him unconscious. Once again, he crumbled back down to earth. His chest rose and fell in shallow, jagged breaths, a distant disappointment.

“Now stay down.”

She crouched down beside him, reaching out for his wrist. To an outside observer, it might appear like she was checking his pulse. She had no such good intentions. It was only Kirsch’s blood curdling scream that saved the man a second time.

* * *

 

Laura did not know much about death. As a vampire, it was a strange naivety to have, young though she was. She had died, yes, but she lacked a clear memory of it. She was, after all, dead at the time. Her death, in a way, was nothing more than a traumatizing nap. She hazily remembered some strange sense of rightness and a vague sense of banishment from this feeling. However, this memory had eroded so much that Laura was now sure she’d imagined the whole thing.

Until Silas, all she knew of death was her mother, a death she had grieved and understood as a young child. It was a hole she barely recalled ever being filled. Death was the awkwardness, the silence, the pity from others. Death was watching her father grieve while pretending that everything was fine and it was her having to comfort others about her own experience.

At Silas, Sarah Jane’s was too distant somehow and Carmilla’s was too temporary.

Once, on the solarium, Carmilla had explained that it took humans centuries to come up with a reasonable criteria to establish death. For centuries, people, who were not actual dead, had been declared so. All those miracles and horror stories of old seemed disappointingly understood.

Had Laura mentioned this to LaFontaine, they might have told her that the coma was a modern day invention and that even now, definitions of death seemed to still be shifting and changing. The heart, the brain, when was one truly dead? When could the modern world and ancient magic no longer revive you? When should it stop trying? But Laura hadn’t asked LaFontaine. How could she? An internet search was, in many ways, just as good.

On the solarium, Laura had pressed for facts on what had started as a philosophical discussion, turning the screws ever deeper with her words.

“If death is truly so hard to establish, how did you know _I_ was dead?”

Carmilla had given Laura a long, hard look laced with pain and sadness. “Only the dead become vampires.”

Laura remembered the way Carmilla gathered up both empty glasses in one hand, how she tucked the mostly untouched book under her arm, and how she rose shakily to her feet and slowly padded out the door without another word or a second glance.

Laura didn’t know much about death, but she knew that Danny was dead in her arms. The blood, which had once poured steadily from the wound in her back, had slowed to an uneven trickle.

Danny was dead and Laura didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know what to feel or how to feel it. She didn’t know where to look or what to do with her hands besides to hold Danny’s body even tighter.

Mel’s voice came like a distant echo, “She deserves her pyre and her songs.”

In the end, Laura could only condense Danny’s death into a blunt and paltry definition.

It meant they lost.

It meant she had lost everything now: her beating heart, Silas, Carmilla, Danny.

* * *

 

[Earlier]

Carmilla’s side of the bed was cold and Laura awoke with a frown. Her eyes flickered over to the nightstand where an untouched mug of blood awaited her. She searched through the darkness of their room knowing Carmilla couldn’t, wouldn’t be far.

Stretched out across the windowsill, somehow sprawled across the frame even while standing, Carmilla looked up at the stars. Her other hand unconsciously toyed with the hem of Laura’s pajama bottoms that she must have liberated from the floor before putting on. The plaid bottoms were slightly too short, exposing Carmilla’s ankles in a way that seemed strangely scandalous considering that she appeared to have put no effort in locating a shirt.

Quietly, fashioning the sheet around her as a makeshift robe, Laura crossed the room, enveloping them both in the safety and warmth of the white fabric. Laura slid her head in the comfortable nook of Carmilla’s neck and shoulder. Carmilla rubbed her check against Laura in response.

“What deep philosophical quandary is it tonight?”

Carmilla gestured to the vast expanse before them. “There is a whole world beyond this campus.”

“Just waiting for us to join it.” Laura followed Carmilla’s gaze, if not quite following her girlfriend’s meaning. After a few moments of silence, Laura turned her attention to Carmilla, her tone soft and curious. “And who would you be in this world? Carmilla? Mircalla? Millarca maybe?”

Carmilla smiled distantly, sadly. “I never much cared for my Mother’s anagrams.”

“Do you have a preference?” Suddenly Laura felt struck that she had never thought to ask. Her girlfriend had had countless names before and would probably have countless more still. It had been silly and naive to assume that 'Carmilla' was preferred simply because it was the name Laura had met her as.

Carmilla gave a noncommittal expression, not willing, despite the intimacy of the moment, to admit just how much she loved the way Laura called her Carm. “A name is just a name, cupcake.”

“So I can be comforted that anagrams aren’t a requirement for vampire?” Laura grinned, steering the conversation into lighter territory.

“Not standard custom by any means,” Carmilla confirmed, drawing Laura in closer against her back. She closed her eyes, silently finding comfort in the way Laura’s bare body pressed up against her own.

“That’s a relief. My name makes for horrible anagrams. Urala, Aural, Araul…” Laura shook her head, pronouncing the last two like half-hearted, drawled attempts to pronounce the word oral.

Carmilla snorted, before dipping her head and unsuccessfully containing her laughter. For a few seconds, her unbridled amusement filled the room. “Definitely not that,” she finally said, her face still brimming with delight. “We’ll figure it out.”

Laura drew away enough to kiss the skin on Carmilla’s shoulder. She felt her chest expanding with a soft warmth that was both scary and comforting in its gravity. The words she wanted to say dangled dangerously on her lips, but Laura couldn’t find the strength to breath life into them just yet. So instead of saying them, she tenderly bit Carmilla’s shoulder before pulling her in for a deep and long embrace. She wished, she hoped Carmilla would taste the sentiment perched so precariously across her mouth. Their lips collided in a way that Laura imagined it toppled into Carmilla’s mouth where she could hold onto it, even in the cold, unknowing hours. There was nothing more that Laura wanted than for Carmilla to simply know, to simply understand without Laura actually having to say the words out loud. After all, saying I love you out loud sounded too much like I forgive you.

But Carmilla knowing, simply knowing despite all sense and logic, without having to hear it? That’s what love was, right?

* * *

 

[Present Day]

Laura’s first thought was that Carmilla’s chains perfectly matched her own. She wondered if they also chaffed Carmilla’s neck, if the hinges and clasps pulled at her arm hair too.

“I bet you wish you married my great-great-grandfather now,” Vordenberg threatened triumphantly.

“I preferred dying,” Carmilla replied with a proud laugh, not a hint of remorse or darkness.

“I can’t let you do that.” Laura stood up, the Silas Charter in hand, the threat strong in her voice.

“The Silas Charter?” Vordenberg, the frail almost joke of a man, looked up and for the first time since marching triumphantly in to the apartment appeared almost scared.

“I mean it. I will.” Laura wasn’t sure she would.

“No, you won’t, Fraulein Hollis, because you and I are the same. You believe, not in the harsh truth of the world, but in a beautiful story. You can’t kill me because that isn’t what a heroine does. Not in the world you want to live in. Also, with every other member of the board dead, killing me would effectively transfer all of Silas to the Corvae Corporation undoing everything you and your friends have fought and died for. And for what? This creature?” As he spoke, his soft words shifted into a darker place until his sword was lifted above his head.

In a way he was right, she was the same as him, so thoroughly convinced of her own rightness that she had destroyed everything.

What he failed to grasp was that Laura had already died in this world once already. The beautiful story she had pined after had only led her further astray. And this creature? She was the same one now. And she would rather be more like Carmilla than the deluded and dangerous human before her. And maybe after all Laura had lost, perhaps she was finally closer to understanding the how and why of Carmilla.

Without a word, she growled, revealing her fangs. Recognition and betrayal flashed in Vordenberg’s eyes in the seconds before she snapped the charter in half like a dried twig.

The world swirled around her as she watched an old man burn to the soundtrack of the wartime sirens. It seemed a death unfitting of a delusional old man who had only wanted a good story and ill-gotten glory.

“Oh my god, what did I do?” More than ever, in that moment, she felt like a silly little girl who understood nothing. Except now she was a murderer.

“Nothing you can’t spend a long life somewhere else regretting, cupcake.” Carmilla held out her hand and without a moment’s hesitation Laura grabbed it. For a second, it was like the stories she had grown up reading. She could have launched herself in Carmilla’s arms. Carmilla would have held her and despite the world falling down around them, they would have kissed. In that moment, in that embrace, they would have been safe. The villain conquered, it would all fade to black. A happy ending.

But Carmilla was right. This wasn’t a story and this wasn’t a happy ending. There had been so many mistakes, too many really. The bodies of those they loved and of those they had killed filled and crowded the space between them. It would take time to clear them away, to give them a proper burial, to heal.

* * *

 

“Is it always like this?” Laura’s voice, hoarse as if it had once again painstakingly crawled out from the underworld on its hands and knees, broke the several day long silence.

“No.” Carmilla, staring up at the dark and crumbling ceiling of the library, resisted the urge to look directly at Laura for fear she might go silent again. She didn’t need context for Laura’s question, what Carmilla lacked was a comforting answer.

“Does it get… easier?” Laura nearly choked on the word easier as if finding it and everything it stood for repulsive but also desirable in equal measures. “Will it always feel like this? Every single time?” Because yes, there would be more. In the silence between her words was the unspoken question: if so, how can Carmilla stand it? How would she?

Carmilla kept her eyes locked on the space where the ceiling met the wall, eyeing the cobwebs for spiders while searching for an adequate response. What could she say? At times, she felt as if the sheer number of people she killed had eroded her soul beyond recognition, beyond existence. But there were other times when she knew that everyone, even vampires,  would become dust eventually. What did a few months, a couple years, even decades truly matter to the never ending onslaught of inevitability?

Finally, she offered that, “There are some who you think will matter more than they do and others that seem inconsequential that will haunt you for years.” It would be there in the stillness behind Carmilla’s eyes or on the edges of her: a whisper of something they’d said, a look on their face, a gesture of their hand. A way they had cleared their throat. And she’d have to trace it back, often taking weeks to remember it was the tailor from Nice, the banker’s wife in Bruges. Or was it Fleming? “There are only ever a few that never leave, though, that mean more.”

“Like the Vordenbergs?” Laura curled up into a tighter ball.

The Vordenbergs. What a strange, tragic thing for them to share: their first kills from the same family. Now more than ever Carmilla wished she had killed the entire bloodline off when she had the chance.

Carmilla exhaled slowly, ridding her lungs of all the unnecessary oxygen that had grown stale in her lungs. “Bygones.”

The word was composed of empty syllables repeated so many times she almost believed them. Carmilla clenched her jaw, as if such a small gesture could fend off the memory of waking up in the underground mausoleum drenched in death’s stench. It was a form of hell, to return to a world where she had been stolen away to rot for him and him alone. An innocent, romantic, and foolish girl in life, Carmilla had been reborn into the world baptized by her own blood in the selfish and violent cruelty of man. By the time she had fought free from that dark place, she had blood underneath her fingernails and death dripping down her chin. It was then she had found Mother. Or rather, that Mother had found her.

“If not the Vordenbergs, then who? If not the first then…” Laura pressed, her voice soft and fragile despite its insistence.

“Mattie.” Pause. “You.” For the first times since Laura spoke, Carmilla’s eyes bravely sought out the other girl.

“I’m not scared.”

“Of what?” Carmilla furrowed her brow.

“Those were her last words… Danny’s. I’m not scared. She kept saying it over and over. _I’m not scared_.”

“She didn’t deserve to die.” Carmilla bit her lip and looked down ashamed. If she had set out earlier, if she hadn’t been captured by Vordenberg, could she have saved Danny? Could she have saved Laura from having to kill Vordenberg? They would never know.

“If… if not for the funeral pyre, would you… if I had asked… would Danny be a vampire now?” There was a childlike vulnerability in Laura’s voice. “If I had asked, would you have saved her too?”

Carmilla frowned, shaking her head with a growing certainty. “She didn’t want that.” Not that Laura had wanted it either. It went unsaid that Danny wasn’t Carmilla’s to save. That, even if she was, turning someone into a vampire couldn’t be considered saving them. It wasn’t that simple. “And you wouldn’t have asked.” After all, how could Laura ask without forgiving Carmilla?

“I’m not scared,” Laura whispered, her words both empty and full, more to herself than to Carmilla.

* * *

 

“Hey.” Laura looked up from where she was curled up on the floor, the blanket loosely slipping off her shoulders, nearly startling Carmilla as she returned.

“Hey.” Carmilla sat down beside Laura, close enough that either girl could easily reach out across the small space between them. If they wanted.

When Carmilla did tentatively cross the vibrating divide, it was only to offer one of the two small mugs in her hands to Laura. Laura accepted the offering, careful that their fingers didn’t accidentally meet.

“Where did you get this?”

“I have my ways.” Carmilla shrugged noncommittally before expanding further, “Apparently when you casually threaten pyrotechnics and arson… I think it’s safe to assume that the library is sentient and has a strong survival instinct. Anyway, don’t get so excited. It’s B positive. Always is here apparently.”

Laura involuntarily scrunched up her face. B positive wasn’t her favorite. In the beginning, blood was blood. It was all-quenching, all-nourishing. Over time, she had begun to develop a palate, discerning different things about the various types and even about the donors’ lives. Who ate healthy, who smoked, who was probably prone to getting sick. She could only imagine what fresh blood would taste like. It was only a matter of time. She was already a murderer, after all.

As if by cue, the thumping coming from LaFontaine’s most recent effort at improving the library’s internet connection grew louder before quickly trailing off again.

Brandishing a chocolate bar from her pocket, Carmilla tossed the candy in Laura’s direction. Laura caught it easily with her free hand. “I wasn’t lying earlier about the vending machine being mostly chocolate.”

Laura stared at the chocolate bar, running her finger over the strange wrapper, finding the plastic and the bright colors both reassuring and startling. She didn’t recognize the brand. Perhaps it was for the best. It would be too disconcerting to be sitting in the library after everything and eating a familiar chocolate bar from her childhood. She had killed a man. He might not have been innocent, but she had been the one to decide that he had to die. She had played God and traded his life for Carmilla’s. And she knew, even now, that if she had the chance she would do it again.

“Figured it might help wash down the blood, it being B positive and all.” Carmilla offered, before turning her attention to her own cup.

“Thanks,” Laura nodded, sipping her blood slowly. “Thank you,” she repeated not sure what else to say but needing to hear her own voice just the same. It sounded the same as before, but how could that be? She felt utterly changed and different on a molecular level, more so than when she first woke up as a vampire even.

She looked down at her hands. The scars were a cold comfort. Here is where she sliced open her finger cooking. Here is where she picked up shattered glass. Here is where she was human. But where was her death, her first kill, Danny? None of that would ever be marked or measured against her skin.

A small trickle of blood ran down her chin as she drank. Carmilla’s eyes followed the crimson trail down Laura’s pale skin, but for once, did not reach out to wipe it away.

It went untouched until Laura was finished, chocolate bar and all. Casually, as if wiping away an errant bread crumb, Laura rubbed it off with the back of her hand. She looked at the stain for briefest of seconds before unabashedly licking it off. In the end, there would be no washing her sins away, no ablutions. It was simply transferring it from one surface to another. The dead, the goodbyes, the mistakes would accumulate in the crevices of her heart like time never would on her skin. But maybe, if she was lucky, over time other things would accumulate there as well.

Her eyes met Carmilla’s across the darkness, a slow and shy smile forming. Carmilla smiled back with a sad fondness. But it was there that Carmilla sensed a slowly growing flicker of hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The quote is from La Fanfarlo by Charles Baudelaire, first published in 1847. As it is technically translated by Laura in the story, it diverges slightly from the generally accepted translation. A fuller version of the translated quote reads:  
> “How little remains of the man I once was, save the memory of him! But remembering is only a new form of suffering.”
> 
> Thanks to everyone for reading this and hope you enjoyed.  
> There will most likely be a a third and final part of this series, sometime after the third season, to address some of the unresolved points currently left open.


End file.
